Coronavirus: The number of COVID-19 cases in India has been rising
India has reported over three lakh cases of the highly infectious COVID-19 disease, caused by the coronavirus, days after the government announced its "Unlock1" plan. The cases rose 2,903 today to reach 3,04,019. Maharashtra has the highest cases in India with 1,01,141, followed by Tamil Nadu with 40,698 and Delhi with 34,687. India has the fourth-highest number of coronavirus cases among 10 nations worst-hit by coronavirus, for which no vaccine has been developed yet. The death count rose to 8,498 with a record single-day spike of 396 fatalities.
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Coronavirus cases continue to rise across the country, days after the centre announced a new period of the lockdown under its "Unlock1" plan, which has eased restrictions in phases by allowing flights to resume, shops to reopen and offices to function, among other measures, with following strict safety rules and social distancing practices.
India's recovery rate - the number of patients who have successfully fought the viral illness - stood at 49.47 per cent this morning. 1,47,195 people have recovered, the Health Ministry has said. The number of recoveries is more than the active cases for the second consecutive day.
The number of cases in Maharashtra crossed the one lakh-mark with 3,717 new cases and 127 deaths. Mumbai reported 1,366 cases and 90 deaths on Friday, taking the total cases to 55,451. So far 2,044 people have died. The recovery rate in Mumbai is 47.3 per cent.
Maharashtra will begin trials for remdesivir, a drug that has been touted as a success in the battle against COVID-19. The state's COVID-19 task force that comprises doctors who look into clinical management and reports to Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray had suggested its use to save lives, sources said.
In Delhi, the situation is particularly dire with the Aam Aadmi Party government this week predicting the caseload will balloon 20-fold to more than half a million by the end of July, which the healthcare system appears woefully ill-prepared for.
The Delhi government has said it will not extend the lockdown. The government is turning cricket stadiums into field hospitals and crematoriums are struggling to cope.
The economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic could plunge an extra 395 million people into extreme poverty and swell the total number of those living on less than Rs 130 a day worldwide to more than one billion, researchers said in a report on Friday, Reuters reported.
Under the worst scenario - a 20 per cent contraction in per capita income or consumption - the number of those living in extreme poverty could rise to 1.12 billion, said the report by UNU-WIDER, part of the United Nations University.
The Supreme Court on Friday told the Finance Ministry and the Reserve Bank of India to meet within three days to decide on waiver of interest on deferred payments of instalments for loans during the moratorium period announced in the wake of the coronavirus lockdown in late March.
The centre has postponed the release of headline consumer price inflation numbers for April and May, a period that include the lockdown, due to inadequate data collection. The headline numbers for retail inflation were not released "in view of the continued limited transactions of products in the market" and problems in collecting data, the Statistics Ministry said in a statement.
