Teachers who were pressed into election duty in UP have become Covid-19 victims, weeks after elections in Uttar Pradesh as the second wave claimed at least over 1,600 teachers' lives. “If you are not sick, do your duty,” is what was apparently told to teachers, according to the son of late Lata, a teacher in UP.
In a move that is expected to help fast-track imports, India on Thursday scrapped local trials for "well-established" foreign coronavirus vaccines. The government said it was in talks with Pfizer for "earliest possible" imports of its shots and that it also had discussions with Johnson & Johnson and Moderna.
To prevent the further spread of Covid-19 in West Bengal, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has extended the existing curbs till June 15. The chief minister eased the rules for construction and added that the focus on vaccinations is the key now.
An 84-year-old Covid-19 positive man who was given monoclonal antibody therapy in Gurgaon, which is said to reduce the chance of hospitalisation by 70 per cent in patients with mild to moderate Covid symptoms, is back to his home. Monoclonal antibody therapy, launched in India recently is similar to the treatment US president Donald Trump received when he suffered from Covid-19. Zydus Cadila on Thursday said it is seeking permission from the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) to initiate human clinical trials for monoclonal antibodies cocktail for the treatment of Covid-19.
Even though deaths due to Covid-19 are hovering around the 4,000 mark, politicking has not stopped. On May 26, Rahul Gandhi posted a screenshot of a The New York Times article on scenarios where the Covid-19 death toll in India may be higher than the official figures. In retort, Union Minister for Health Harsh Vardhan said that politics over corpses was Congress's style, adding that Rahul Gandhi trusts New York over Delhi.
External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar has said that there is a political effort to depict the current government in India "in a certain way" and there is a difference between the political imagery that has been "concocted" and the actual governance out there.
Reserve Bank of India on Thursday said that the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic has triggered revision of growth projections for the current financial year with consensus gravitating towards its earlier forecast of 10.5 per cent.
In the south of India, priests at a temple are saying daily prayers to two "coronavirus goddesses" in an effort to tame the pandemic. Two "Corona Devi" idols have been set up in the southern city of Coimbatore, badly hit in an outbreak that has killed 1,00,000 people nationwide in the past four weeks.
Though most of India has seen an unabated onslaught of Covid-19 cases, Dharavi has yet again shown the way in fighting the pandemic. On Wednesday, just three cases were reported in Dharavi, while the total active cases are just 62.
Japan has been seeing a rise in Covid-19 cases, but preparations to safely organise the Tokyo Olympics continue with no sign of the Games being cancelled or postponed. A physician representing a Japanese medical body warned Thursday that holding the postponed Tokyo Olympics in two months could lead to the spread of variants of the coronavirus.
US President Joe Biden ordered aides to find answers to the origin of the virus that causes Covid-19, saying on Wednesday that US intelligence agencies are pursuing rival theories potentially including the possibility of a laboratory accident in China. Politicising the origins of Covid-19 would hamper further investigations and undermine global efforts to curb the pandemic, China's US embassy said in response.