Coronavirus news highlights: Covid-19 fatality rate in India is 83 per million population

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A Cabinet minister says Pakistan has witnessed a 140% increase in fatalities from Covid-19 in recent weeks due to widespread violations of social distancing rules.

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Total number of confirmed positive cases in India reaches 7,628,721; death toll stands at 116,153 as of October 20

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Assam reports 666 new #COVID19 cases today, taking the total positive cases in the state to 2,02,073, including 884 deaths and 1,74,411 discharges: Assam Health Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma pic.twitter.com/ZNIXo8yyHT

— ANI (@ANI) October 20, 2020

Maharashtra's coronavirus infection tally on Tuesday increased to 16,09,516 with 8,151 new cases, said a state health official.

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The U.S. health regulator's criteria for allowing emergency use of a Covid-19 vaccine and plans to monitor its safety after a regulatory go-ahead, are among the topics to be discussed at a closely watched meeting scheduled for Thursday.

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Armed with scientific evidence proving its futility, the Centre is set to drop the convalescent plasma therapy as a Covid-19 treatment option from the national treatment guidelines.

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It’s that time of the year. The fragrance of ‘shiuli’, the delicate orange and white flowers that blossom right about now, mingles with the autumn breeze to herald Durga Puja but the frankincense is missing and a wary quiet has overtaken the sound of festivities.

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In a novel initiative, Chamarajanagar District Administration has set up a library at the Dedicated Covid Health Centre (DDHC), in Santhemarahalli of Chamarajanagar taluk, to help Covid-19 patients to de-stress and also to divert them fromCovid-related anxiety.

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Gujarat's tally of coronavirus cases rises to 1,61,848 with 1,126 new infections; death toll reaches 3,654 with eight more fatalities: health department

— Press Trust of India (@PTI_News) October 20, 2020

Describing as "unfortunate" the comments by Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan on rising Covid-19 cases in Kerala, Congress leader and Wayanad MP Rahul Gandhi said it was not appropriate to blame others and point fingers, but fight the pandemic unitedly.

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Scientists called for urgent action to improve public trust in immunisation as research suggested sizeable minorities in some nations may be reluctant to be vaccinated against Covid-19.

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Most people would get a Covid-19 vaccine if their government or employer recommended it, results of a global poll showed on Tuesday, amid growing concerns about public distrust of the shots being developed at speed to end the pandemic.

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In his address to the nation, PM Modi saidthat the government is making all efforts to ensure that a vaccine, whenever it is launched, reaches every Indian. He also said no laxity should be allowed until a vaccine is launched as it puts lives of others at risk.

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Around 90 volunteers will be recruited to be exposed to small amounts of the novel coronavirus in a controlled setting for the first stage of "human challenge" trials to try and speed up the hunt for a viable Covid-19 vaccine, the UK government said.

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The Securities Appellate Tribunal (SAT) has extended the suspension of physical hearing till October 29 amid the coronavirus pandemic.

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Amidst criticisms over Kerala lowering its guard against Covid-19, the state's health sector is now mired in controversiesfollowing revelations by a nursing officer and a doctor thatsomeCovid-19 patients died due to lapses in treatment.

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Singapore plans to roll out rapid Covid-19 tests for events such as weddings and business conferences as the city-state looks to further reopen its economy, its health ministry said on Tuesday.

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Restaurateur Pascal Mousset has a new menu he hopes will persuade his patrons to change the habit of a lifetime in response to Paris's coronavirus curfew, by - perish the thought - eating dinner as early as the English.

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The pandemic will eat up around 40 per cent of the operational profit of private hospitals this fiscal, as billing has plunged drastically due to the virus outbreak and the resultant proclivity of people to avoid hospitals for the non-emergency situations, says a report.

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Bengal could be facing the prospect of an explosion of Covid-19 cases in the coming weeks and months thanks to the recklessness of common folk, the administration, and politicians of all shades.

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The state may have the highest requirement for ICU units for Covid-19 patients but scientists at the country’s top research institute say that ICUs as they exist currently are more a hazard for patients and medical staff.

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Madrid's regional authorities are evaluating whether a curfew is needed to curb a new wave of coronavirus in one of Europe's hotspots, the area's top health official said on Tuesday.

"A curfew would mean ... that at some hours there's no mobility, like France has done for example," Enrique Ruiz Escudero told Spanish news agency Europa Press.

France last week ordered a curfew in Paris and eight other cities from 9 pm to 6 am

Ladakh's Covid-19 caseload climbed to 5,647 on Tuesday as 49 more people tested positive for the disease in the union territory, according to an official bulletin.

Of the 49 fresh cases, 46 were detected in Leh district and three in Kargil district, officials said.

Over 28,000 coronavirus RT- PCR tests have been conducted in nearly three months at labs set up at Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Marathwada University's (BAMU) campus here and its sub-centre in Osmanabad, a university official said on Tuesday.

The lab in Aurangabad, which became operational on July 22, had conducted 19,437 swab tests till Monday morning, while the one at the BAMU's sub-centre in Osmanabad has carried out 9,000 tests, the official said.

Italy's northern Lombardy region prepared Tuesday to impose a nighttime curfew, the most restrictive anti-coronavirus measure the country has seen since emerging from a national lockdown in the spring.

The curfew from 11pm (2100GMT) to 5am is expected to begin on Thursday night and last to November 13.

Turkey's daily number of new coronavirus cases surpassed 2,000 on Monday, reaching levels last seen in early May when restrictions on businesses and households were in place.

Data from the Health Ministry showed another 2,026 people with Covid-19 symptoms had been diagnosed, as Ankara continues to report only symptomatic cases.

It’s that time of the year. The fragrance of ‘shiuli’, the delicate orange and white flowers that blossom right about now, mingles with the autumn breeze to herald Durga Puja but the frankincense is missing and a wary quiet has overtaken the sound of festivities.

In the air there is the virus and the fear of it.

A second British laboratory is joining a global lab network to assess data from potential coronavirus vaccines, set up by a major non-profit health emergencies group to establish the effectiveness of different vaccine candidates.

Earlier this month, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) set up the network, allowing scientists and drugmakers to compare vaccines and speed up selection of the most effective shots.

Belgium could be returning to full lockdown if there is no reversal of the surge in Covid-19 infections and hospital admissions, a senior Belgian virologist said in a newspaper interview on Tuesday.

"We would then have to consider even more restrictive measures, which could resemble a lockdown like the one imposed in March and April," Yves Van Laethem told La Derniere Heure.

Britain said on Tuesday it would back human challenge studies to accelerate the development of Covid-19 vaccines by exposing volunteers to the virus after they had received a vaccine candidate.

The government said it would invest 33.6 million pounds ($43.5 million) in the studies in partnership with Imperial College London, laboratory and trial services company hVIVO and the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust.

A rider from UAE Team Emirates and a staff member from Team AG2R La Mondiale have tested positive for Covid-19 at the Giro d'Italia following the latest round of tests, organisers RCS and the sport's governing UCI said in a joint statement on Tuesday.

The Giro was on the brink of being cancelled last week after five teams were hit by Covid-19 cases, with the Mitchelton-Scott and Jumbo-Visma teams withdrawing before the 10th stage.

Covid-19 patients who are sick enough to be hospitalised are likely to have high levels of antibodies that can protect against the disease, and may be the best donors for convalescent plasma therapy, according to a study.

The research, published on Monday in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, also found that older males who have recovered from Covid-19 after having been hospitalised are strong candidates for donating plasma.

Active cases of Covid-19 in India are less than 10 per cent of the total caseload, while the number of people who have recuperated from the disease has crossed 67 lakh pushing the national recovery rate to 88.63 per cent, the Union Health Ministry said on Tuesday.

There are 7,48,538 active cases of coronavirus infection as on date which comprise merely 9.85 per cent of the total caseload.

Odisha's COVID-19 tally mounts to 2,72,250 with 1,904 new cases; 16 fresh fatalities push death toll to 1,168: Health official

— Press Trust of India (@PTI_News) October 20, 2020

Mizoram's Covid-19 tally rose to 2,280 on Tuesday as 27 more people, including a seven-year-old boy, tested positive for the infection, a health official said.

Aizawl reported 20 new cases, followed by two each in Lawngtlai and Serchhip, and one each in Champhai, Kolasib and Mamit districts, he said.

Pfizer Inc and BioNTech SE announced on Tuesday the start in Japan of combined Phase I and Phase II clinical trials of their mRNA vaccine candidate against the coronavirus.

The study will recruit 160 people aged from 20 to 85, the firms said in a statement. Earlier, they had agreed to supply Japan with 120 million doses of their experimental coronavirus vaccine in the first half of 2021.

Two more people, including a 90 -year old woman from Mahe, died of Covid-19 on Tuesday pushing the toll in the union territory to 577. Director of Health and Family Welfare S Mohan Kumar said in a release that 206 fresh cases were identified at the end of examination of 4,013 samples during last 24 hours raising the caseload to 33,452.

The Director said 252 patients were discharged during last 24 hours and the fatality and recovery rates were 1.72 percent and 86.02 percent recently.

Arunachal Pradesh's Covid-19 caseload rose to 13,643 on Tuesday as 238 more people, including 10 Army jawans and four health personnel, tested positive for the infection, a senior health official said.

The Capital Complex region reported the highest number of new infections at 40, followed by Lohit (39) and East Siang (32), he said.

Australian officials were evacuating workers from a Kuwaiti-flagged livestock ship docked off the country's west coast on Tuesday after at least half the 52 crew tested positive for Covid-19.

The cluster of cases is the fourth outbreak detected onboard a ship arriving at a Western Australia port over the last month, in a state that has otherwise been free of the coronavirus for weeks.

The number of new coronavirus infections reported daily in India dropped below 50,000 nearly after three months, taking India's Covid-19 caseload to75,97,063, according to the Union Health Ministry data updated on Tuesday.

A total of 46,790 fresh infections were reported in a day, while the death toll climbed to 1,15,197 with 587 fatalities being registered in a span of 24 hours, the data updated at 8 am showed.

Moderna Inc Chief Executive Officer Stéphane Bancel expects interim results from its Covid-19 vaccine trial in November and that the US government could give an emergency use nod in December, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Speaking at the newspaper's annual Tech Live conference, Bancel also said sufficient interim results from the study takes longer to get and that the government's permission to use the vaccine may not come until next year.

The Delhi Police has issued 144 challans to metro passengers for violating Covid-19 guidelines in the last six days, officials said on Tuesday.

The police personnel at metro stations have been conducting a drive to check the violation of Covid-19 guidelines. Passengers who were not wearing masks or maintaining social distancing were fined, they said.

India is on course to top the world in coronavirus cases, but from Maharashtra's whirring factories to Kolkata's thronging markets, people are back at work -- and eager to forget the pandemic for festival season.

After a strict lockdown in March that left millions on the brink of starvation, the government and people of the world's second-most populous country decided life must go on.

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Telangana recorded 1,486 #COVID19 cases, 1,891 recoveries and 7 deaths yesterday, taking total cases to 2,24,545 including 2,02,577 recoveries, 1,282 deaths and 20,686 active cases: State Health Department pic.twitter.com/dPyqp4A177

— ANI (@ANI) October 20, 2020

Two videos of patients performing 'garba' at Covid-19 facilities in Mumbai have surfaced on social media, even as the Maharashtra government has appealed to people to hold health and blood donation camps instead of dandiya during the ongoing Navratri festival.

In one of the videos, a number of Covid-19 patients with masks on their faces are seen performing garba along with health workers wearing PPE kits on a Bollywood song in a female ward.

The National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) has fixed the price of a cubic metre (CuM) of liquid medical oxygen (LMO) at Rs 15 and a CuM of oxygen in cylinders at Rs 25 because manufacturers have hiked prices of fillers as the demand went up multifold due to Covid-19.

"Price regulation at this end is imperative for continued availability of medical oxygen across the country," NPPA observed. But because of a rider in the NPPA's September 25 order that the price caps will not be applicable to existing contracts has put the hospitals in a vulnerable condition. As consumption due to Covid is much more than what it was when they signed the contract.

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The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 6,868 to 373,167, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Tuesday.

The reported death toll rose by 47 to 9,836, the tally showed.

I lost my father to Covid-19. He was in ICU for 22 days, of which the final 12 days, he was on invasive ventilator support. Based on my experience, these seven recommendations can significantly reduce Covid-19 deaths.

Elderly people and those with comorbidities must be tested on a priority basis. The wait time for an RT-PCR test result, even for the elderly, in Bengaluru, over the last few months, has been three to five days while in north India (Delhi, Jaipur) it has been 18 to 24hrs. Early detection allows early medical intervention, when the viral load is still low, thereby improving outcome.

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A government-appointed scientific panel’s claim that the Covid-19 epidemic will run its course by February 2021 in India has come under criticism from multiple scientists who questioned the method used by the panel to come to the conclusion.

“I am pretty sceptical of long-term predictions even from more detailed models, and this one is pretty crude,” said a professor at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai.

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Reuters Photo

Coronavirus cases in New Jersey, an early epicenter of the pandemic, are on the rise again, doubling over the past month to an average of more than 900 new positive tests a day, a worrisome reversal of fortune for a state that had driven transmission rates to some of the nation’s lowest levels.

After an outbreak several weeks ago in a heavily Orthodox Jewish town near the Jersey Shore, cases are now rising in counties across the state, driven, officials say, by indoor gatherin

A coronavirus outbreak has killed 10 residents in a nursing home in a northwestern Kansas county that proportionally already had the nation's largest increase in cases over two weeks.

The health department in Norton County reported Monday night that all 62 residents and an unspecified number of employees at the Andbe Home in Norton had tested positive for the novel coronavirus. The agency also said one Andbe Home resident was hospitalized, while the remaining 51 were being treated at the home.

Australia's Victoria state may accelerate the easing of social distancing restrictions after reporting just one new Covid-19 case on Tuesday, Premier Daniel Andrews said on Tuesday.

Case numbers were down from four on Monday, extending a run of single-digit daily increases to almost a week, and are well down from a peak of more than 700 cases in a single day in early August.

China reported 19 new coronavirus cases in the mainland for October 19, up from 13 cases a day earlier, the health commission said on Tuesday.

All of the new infections were imported, the National Health Commission said in a statement.

Israel has named its Covid-19 vaccine candidate 'Brilife' and its human trials will begin by October-end, according to an official press release.

The prospective vaccine is being developed by the Israel Institute of Biological Research (IIBR) that was established in 1952 as part of the Israel Defence Forces' Science Corps, and later became a civilian organisation.

AFP Photo

Passengers travelling to Hong Kong and Italy from Britain's Heathrow Airport will undergo a one-hour coronavirus test before flying out of the United Kingdom under plans to open up international travel, The Times reported on Tuesday.

Rapid tests will be introduced from Tuesday at Heathrow Airport to allow travellers to enter countries where a negative Covid-19 test result is needed to skip quarantine, the newspaper said.

Argentina has become the fifth country in the world to exceed one million coronavirus cases, its health ministry said on Monday, making it the smallest nation by far to reach the grim milestone after infections accelerated in recent weeks.

There were 1,002,662 confirmed cases of the virus in the South American country by Monday night, the ministry said in a statement.