JOIN USFrom the Newsroom: India sees steep rise in Covid-19 cases
In your evening news brief, India on Saturday recorded 89,129 new Covid-19 cases in a day; Iran's government says it is opposed to any gradual easing of sanctions and a Taiwan court releases on bond the manager of a construction site whose truck authorities believe to have caused a train accident in the country.
With second wave of the pandemic rising, there have been a rise in the number of cases. Eight states witnessed a steep rise in daily new Covid-19 cases and accounted for 81.42 per cent of the infections reported on Saturday, the Union Health Ministry said. These eight states are Maharashtra, Karnataka, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Madhya Pradesh.
Among prominent figures testing positive for the virus incluse indian cricketer Axar Patel and DMK MP Kanimozhi. Four days after testing positive for Covid-19, National Conference president and former chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir, Farooq Abdullah was hospitalised on Saturday.
India on Saturday recorded 89,129 new Covid-19 cases in a day, the highest daily rise in around six-and-half-months, taking the nationwide tally of infections to over 1.23 crore, according to the Union Health Ministry data on Saturday.
The death toll increased to 1,64,110 with 714 more fatalities in a day, also the highest since October 21.
The jump in cases reported on Saturday was the highest since September 20 last year when 92,605 new infections were recorded in a span of 24 hours.
Iran's government wants the United States to lift all sanctions on its country and rejects any "step-by-step" easing of the restrictions, Iranian state broadcaster Press TV reported on Saturday.
The two countries said on Friday they would hold indirect talks in Vienna from next week as part of broader negotiations to revive the 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and global powers. The US State Department said the focus would be on "the nuclear steps that Iran would need to take in order to return to compliance" with that agreement.
Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said on Saturday that Tehran was opposed to any gradual easing of sanctions.
A Taiwan court on Saturday released on bond the manager of a construction site whose truck authorities believe to have caused a train accident that killed at least 50 people, but prosecutors vowed to appeal
Friday's crash was Taiwan's worst rail accident in seven decades, when an express train hit the truck that had slid down a bank beside the track from the building site, whose manager is suspected of having failed to properly engage the brake.
Source: DHNS/ PTI/ Reuters