Coronavirus news highlights: 772 new Covid-19 cases in Karnataka, 7 deaths

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. Karnataka added 772 new Covid-19 cases and seven deaths, taking the total number of infections to 9,10,241 and the toll to 12,016, the health department said on Monday.

The day also saw 1,261 patients getting discharged after recovery, leaving 14,001 active cases. Bengaluru Urban district continued to account for most of the cases, as it reported 363 infections on Monday.

. The Covid-19 death toll in Uttar Pradesh rose to 8,212 on Monday with 16 more fatalities, while 1,018 new cases took the infection tally to 5,75,621, an official statement said.

Of the 16 deaths, five were reported from Lucknow while two fatalities each were reported from Kanpur and Varanasi, it said.

Of the new cases, 190 were reported from Lucknow.

In the past 24 hours, 1,397 Covid-19 patients have recovered from the infection, taking the overall recoveries to 5,50,587, it said.

. West Bengal's Covid-19 tally rose to 5,38,343 on Monday as 1,515 more people tested positive for the infection, a health bulletin said.

Forty-one more patients succumbed to the infection, pushing the state's coronavirus death toll to 9,401, it said.

As many as 2,342 more people were cured of the disease, taking the recovery rate among the coronavirus patients in the state to 95.11 per cent, the bulletin said.

The state now has 16,903 active cases, while 5,12,039 people have recovered from the disease so far, it said.

. The Tamil Nadu government on Monday banned New Year revelries on beaches, hotels, clubs and resorts on the night of December 31 and January 1, 2021 as part of efforts to prevent the spread of Coronavirus.

There will be no entry to the beaches on these days, and no midnight revelries would be allowed on beach roads, restaurants, hotels, clubs, resorts including beach resorts, and similar places on New years eve and the following day, according to an official statement here.

This order restraining gathering of people in large numbers was passed to minimise the spread of the pandemic.

. Punjab recorded 338 fresh Covid-19 cases on Monday which took the state's infection tally to 1,63,378, while 11 more fatalities pushed the death toll to 5,212, according to a medical bulletin.

Currently, there are 5,408 active Covid-19 cases in the state, the bulletin said.

. Tripura's Covid-19 tally mounted to 33,175 after 30 more tested positive for the virus on Monday, a health department official said.

Two fresh fatalities pushed the coronavirus death toll to 377, he said.

West Tripura district, comprising state capital Agartala, has accounted for 189 Covid-19 deaths, the official said.

The state now has 237 active cases, while 32,538 people have recovered from the disease. Twenty-three patients have migrated to other states.

. The Covid-19 tally in Gujarat's Ahmedabad rose by 211 to reach 55,796, while the death of four patients took the toll to 2,214, an official said.

The number of people discharged reached 50,579, including 205 during the day, he added.

"The city accounted for 204 of the new cases and 202 of the recoveries, while the rest were from rural areas. The city's north-west zone has 420 active cases, followed by 413 in south-west and 410 in west," said an Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation official.

. The European Union scrambled Monday to hammer out a coordinated response to a mutated strain of the coronavirus sweeping Britain, after countries cut transport links from the UK.

Experts from the bloc's 27 member states held a three-hour crisis meeting in Brussels to come up with options on how to standardise the measures put in place to try to curb the spread of the new variant.

"Participants stated their support for rapid action towards a coordinated EU approach in relation to measures applied to connections with the UK and called for guidelines from the Commission," a European diplomat said.

. Gujarat recorded 960 new coronavirus cases on Monday, taking its tally to 2,36,259, the state health department said.

The state has recorded the daily Covid-19 cases in three digits after a gap of over one month.

The death toll rose to 4,241 with seven more Covid-19 patients succumbing to the infection, said the department in a release here.

. Fines to the tune of Rs 8.82 crore have been collected between December 14 and 20 by police in Gujarat from people violating the mask rule amid the coronavirus outbreak and those spitting in public, an official said on Monday.

A release issued by the state police said fines were collected from 88,593 people, with Rs 1.25 crore collected on an average from 12,500 violators per day.

. Nagaland on Monday recorded an all-time high Covid-19 recovery rate of 94.4 per cent as 50 patients recuperated from the disease, while 16 fresh infections pushed the state's tally to 11,858, a health official said.

On Sunday, Nagaland's Covid-19 recovery rate was 93.75 per cent. Altogether 11,194 coronavirus patients have recovered till date, while the number of active Covid-19 cases has come down to 462, Director of Health and Family Welfare, Dr Denis Hangsing said in the daily Covid-19 bulletin.

. Stanislaw Olbrich, a 55-year-old truck driver stranded 24 miles north of Dover after much of the world shut borders to Britain, just wants to get home for Christmas with his wife and three children in southern Poland.

Many countries, including the rest of Europe, closed their borders to Britain after Prime Minister Boris Johnson effectively cancelled Christmas for millions because of an infectious new coronavirus strain.

. Andhra Pradesh on Monday saw the addition of 214 fresh Covid-19 cases, which pushed its overall tally to 8,78,937, while the active cases skid below the 4,000 mark. The latest bulletin said 422 patients recovered and two more succumbed in the 24 hours ending 9 am on Monday. The active cases dipped to 3,992 after a total of 8,67,867 recoveries and 7,078 deaths, it said.

. Maharashtra Government announces night curfew between 11 pm to 6 am in the state in all municipal corporations from December 22, 2020, to January 5, 2021.

. It is not too late for Europe to contain the new variant of Covid-19 exploding in southeast England, a top coronavirus mutation tracker told AFP.

However, there is a fair chance that the strain is already circulating under the radar in other countries, said Emma Hodcroft.

The US-British molecular epidemiologist, based at the University of Bern, is a co-developer on the Nextstrain project, analysing SARS-CoV-2 sequences from around the world to monitor variations that emerge.

The expert has been tracking the current British and South African mutations.

. French President Emmanuel Macron was still displaying some coronavirus symptoms but his overall condition was stable, government spokesman Gabriel Attal told reporters on Monday.

Macron, 43, has tested positive for Covid-19 on Thursday and has gone into quarantine at the presidential retreat of La Lanterne, close to the Palace of Versailles.

. Union minister Ramdas Athawale on Monday said a Covid-19 vaccine will be available in the country in one or two months.

Once the vaccine comes, "corona will go from here (the country)", he told reporters in Panaji.

A vaccine against Covid-19 will be introduced in the country in next one or two months, he said.

"The coronavirus will be there for another six-seven months, but it has to go one day. Once the vaccine comes, corona will go from here," the minister said.

Athawale had in February this year coined the slogan 'Go Corona Go'.

. Russia on Monday announced it will suspend flights with the UK for one week over the emergence of a more infectious strain of the coronavirus there.

A government decree said Russia would "temporarily suspend flights with the UK due to the worsening epidemiological situation" starting from midnight local time (2100 GMT) on Monday.

. Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha on Monday blamed a coronavirus outbreak linked to the kingdom's largest seafood market on low-paid migrant workers employed in the country's lucrative shrimp industry.

Thailand has been on high alert since Thursday when a 67-year-old prawn seller from Mahachai market tested positive for coronavirus.

Contact tracing and mass testing found more than 800 cases so far linked to the site -- a major outbreak for a country which previously had just 4,000 confirmed infections.

. Russia on Monday reported a new record increase in coronavirus infections, as some experts said the pandemic had hit the country harder that government statistics suggest.

Health officials reported 493 new virus deaths and 29,350 cases, bringing total infections to 2,877,727 -- the fourth-highest in the world.

Total fatalities stood at 51, 351.

Moscow and the second city of Saint Petersburg were the hardest hit, recording 7,797 and 3,752 new cases.

. Myanmar closed off public gardens, parks and a lake in its biggest city Yangon on Monday, hoping to prevent a spike in coronavirus cases during year-end holidays.

City officials trying to protect recent gains in containing Covid-19 infections put up barricades, signs and cordons around the Mahabandula park and along the banks of the Inya lake, among other popular sites known for drawing holiday crowds.

. Families of men incarcerated at Michigan's Kinross Correctional Facility believed its remote location would spare it from a deadly Covid-19 outbreak. For a while, they seemed to be right.

Kinross, built on the grounds of a former Air Force base in the Upper Peninsula, is closer to Canada than it is to Detroit. Unlike most prisons in Michigan, Kinross had remained almost unscathed by the novel coronavirus with only one case between March and October.

. Australia confirmed on Monday it has detected two cases of a fast-spreading new coronavirus strain that has forced Britain to reverse plans to ease curbs over Christmas, the first confirmed cases of the strain in the Asia-Pacific region.

Australia's most populous state on Sunday reported six new cases of the novel coronavirus in people returning from overseas and in quarantine, and authorities said among them were two cases of the fast-spreading new strain.

. AFP Photo

. Indian-American physician Vivek Murthy, US President-elect Joe Biden's pick for Surgeon General, has said there is no evidence to suggest that a new and more contagious coronavirus variant reported in the UK is any deadlier.

Murthy, 43, said that there was no reason to believe that the coronavirus vaccines that have already been developed would not be effective against the new strain as well.

"This news from the UK appears to be about a new strain of the virus that’s more transmissible, more contagious than the virus we’ve seen prior to this," he said.

"While it seems to be more transmissible, we do not have evidence yet that this is a more deadly virus to an individual who acquires it," Murthy said.

. Coronavirus cases spiking nationwide. A chill, existential and literal, setting in once more. And now: a winter likely to be streaked by a soundtrack of sirens instead of silver bells.

It was winter when the pandemic began, and it will be winter long before it's over. Weary and traumatised from months of death and confinement, Americans are being handed mixed messages, from governments to their own internal clocks running haywire on flattened time.

Shouldn't it be over by now? After all, vaccines are here. But before the average person will get inoculated, winter will exact its toll.

. France became the latest European country to close all its borders with the UK after Germany, Italy, Belgium, Denmark, Bulgaria, the Irish Republic, Turkey and Canada suspended flights amid growing concerns of an "out of control" new variant of coronavirus spreading at a much faster pace in parts of England.

India too suspended flights arriving from UK for the rest of the year.

. Department-related Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs, headed by Rajya Sabha MP Anand Sharma, presented 229th report on ‘Management of Covid-19 pandemic & related issues’ to Rajya Sabha Chairman today through video conferencing

(ANI)

. France will start its Covid-19 vaccination programme next Sunday, Health Minister Olivier Veran wrote on his Twitter feed.

Veran added in his Tweet on Monday that the French vaccination programme would start off with the most vulnerable members of the population, such as the elderly.

(Reuters)

. Qatar's Ministry of Public Health granted emergency use authorisation for the Covid-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech and is due to receive the first shipment on Monday, state media reported.

. On a Saturday afternoon in March, as Covid-19 was bearing down on New York City, a dozen scientists anxiously crowded around a computer in a suburban drug company's lab.

. Hong Kong on Monday said it would ban all flights from Britain following the discovery of a new and highly infectious strain of the coronavirus there.

. Italy has detected a patient infected with the new strain of the coronavirus also found in Britain, the health ministry said on Sunday.

. As the pandemic rages, children's visits with Santa Claus are going virtual — to protect both them and the men in high-risk groups who dress up as old St. Nick.

. French Health Minister Olivier Veran told Europe 1 radio on Monday that current Covid-19 vaccines should work against a new strain of the virus, recently found in the United Kingdom.

. (ANI)

. Russia on Monday reported a record 29,350 new coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours, including 7,797 in Moscow, pushing the total number of cases to 2,877,727 since the pandemic began.

Authorities confirmed 493 deaths in the last 24 hours, pushing the official death toll to 51,351.

(Reuters)

. Pakistan has reported 1,792 new cases of coronavirus in the last 24 hours, taking the total number of infections in the nation to 458,968, the health ministry said on Monday.

The Ministry of National Health Services also said that a total of 62 new patients have died due to the contagious disease.

(PTI)

. Prime Minister Boris Johnson was to chair a crisis meeting Monday as a growing number of countries from France to Argentina blocked flights to Britain over a new highly infectious coronavirus strain the UK said was "out of control".

The World Health Organization also called for stronger containment measures across Europe, which has passed 500,000 deaths from Covid-19.

(AFP)

. The United Kingdom was on Monday shut off from much of Europe after its closest allies cut transport ties due to fears about a new strain of the coronavirus, sowing chaos for families and companies just days before it exits the European Union's orbit.

France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Ireland, Belgium, Israel and Canada shut off travel ties after Prime Minister Boris Johnson warned on Saturday that a highly infectious new strain of the virus was a danger to the country.

(Reuters)

. Flights from Britain to Denmark will be suspended for 48 hours starting Mondayto limit the spread of a new strain of coronavirus, the country's transport minister said on Twitter early Monday.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced on Saturday that the new strain had led to spiralling infection numbers.

(Reuters)

. India is yet to approve a coronavirus vaccine as trials are under different stages of finalisation. Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan assured that India may be able to start the Covid-19 vaccination drive as early as January. But when will the vaccines be available for children?

. The United Kingdom has gone back into strict lockdown due to the discovery of the new strain of the Sars-CoV-2 virus, which causes Covid-19, weeks after it started vaccinating against the virus.

. Total cases: 3,26,596

Total recoveries: 3,21,647

Active cases: 3,057

Death toll: 1,839

. "Please help us leave!" says a woman in a video shared online, one of the dozens of passengers from Britain stranded in German airports on Sunday night.

. Canada will halt the entry of passenger flights from Britain for 72 hours from midnight Sunday, authorities announced, the latest nation to take action over a new fast-spreading strain of coronavirus in the UK.

. The Covid-19 caseload in Thane district of Maharashtra has gone up to 2,38,931 with the addition of 403 new cases, an official said on Monday.

. Active cases: 332 Death toll: 627

. Total cases: 2,81,730

Total recoveries: 2,73,625

Active cases: 6,590

Death toll: 1,515

. The total number of confirmed positive cases in India reaches 1,00,56,621; death toll stands at 145,810 as of December 21.

. Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray on Sunday said wearing masks will be mandatory for the next six months in the state.

. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will receive the Covid-19 shot in public once those in his age group are in line to be vaccinated, he said in an interview broadcast Sunday.

. International cricket found a way through this year's coronavirus pandemic but the strain of 'bubble life' was evident by the end of 2020.

. US congressional leaders said on Sunday they had reached agreement on a $900 billion package to provide the first new aid in months to an economy hammered by the novel coronavirus pandemic, with votes likely on Monday.

. Saudi Arabia on Sunday halted international flights and suspended entry through its land and sea ports for at least a week, after a new fast-spreading strain of coronavirus appeared in Britain.

. The chief executive of Uber, the ride-hailing company whose six New York lobbying firms include Albany’s best connected, wrote last week to Gov. Andrew Cuomo with an ask: priority for its drivers in the next round of coronavirus vaccinations.

. Follow coronavirus vaccine latest news updates on DH

. Top Capitol Hill negotiators sealed a deal Sunday on an almost $1 trillion Covid-19 economic relief package, finally delivering long-overdue help to businesses and individuals and providing money to deliver vaccines to a nation eager for them.

. After consultation with experts, we've prioritised 30 crore people for Covid-19 vaccine. It includes health workers, frontline workers like police, military & sanitation staff, people above 50 yrs & those who are below 50 yrs but are suffering from certain diseases: Health Minister

. Polio & Covid-19 are two different diseases. It was scientifically possible to eradicate polio... Ultimately, coronavirus will also subside & we'll come across its sporadic occurrences: Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan to ANI on being asked if Covid can be eradicated like polio

. We've formed task forces at state, district & block levels. Thousands of master trainers have been trained across the country. We've conducted training at state level & trained over 20,000 workers in about 260 districts, he added.

. Our first priority has been safety & effectiveness of vaccines. We don't want to compromise on that. I personally feel, maybe in any week of January, we can be in position to give first Covid-19 vaccine shot to people of India: Union Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan to ANI

. Just as vaccines begin to offer hope for a path out of the pandemic, officials in Britain this past weekend sounded an urgent alarm about what they called a highly contagious new variant of the coronavirus circulating in England.

. The leader of the Trump administration's vaccination program says people who have been infected with the coronavirus — a group that includes President Donald Trump — should receive the vaccine.

. The Union Health Ministry has called an urgent meeting of its Joint Monitoring Group on Monday to discuss the emergence of a mutated variant of the coronavirus in the UK, which has led to a surge in the infection rate there.

Coronavirus news highlights: 772 new Covid-19 cases in Karnataka, 7 deaths

Thank you for following DH's live coverage on the coronavirus outbreak.

772 new Covid-19 cases in Karnataka, 7 deaths

1,018 new Covid-19 cases take UP's tally to 5,75,621; death toll 8,212

Bengal reports 1,515 new Covid-19 cases, 41 fresh fatalities

TN govt bans New Year revelries on beaches, resorts due to Covid-19

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