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  • India loses 2,263 people to Covid-19 in 24 hours

    India loses 2,263 people to Covid-19 in 24 hours

    India on Friday logged over 332,730 new COVID-19 infections, the highest-ever daily infection worldwide.

    A major hospital in New Delhi reported several deaths while flagging a critical shortage of medical oxygen.

    The South Asian country posted another grim record as it registered 2,263 deaths, its highest death toll from COVID-19 in a 24-hour period, government data showed.

    India recorded 314,835 cases on Thursday and the biggest surge globally since the pandemic began in 2020, bringing the Indian healthcare system to breaking point.

    United States had recorded the previous highest one-day spike in the world, of around 300,300 cases in January, according to Johns Hopkins University’s tracking website.

    Twenty-five of the sickest patients died in the last 24 hours at Sir Ganga Ram hospital in Delhi, which put out an emergency appeal to authorities on Friday morning, saying it had oxygen for only two more hours and 60 more patients were at risk.

    Oxygen supplies were replenished subsequently.

    The Hospital chairman, DS Rana said there had been a large number of deaths of COVID-19 patients in 24 hours for the first time, but did not link them to oxygen shortage.

    He said the hospital was doing manual ventilation to ensure patients survived.

    However, senior doctors told NDTV that a lack of oxygen could have been a contributory factor in the deaths.

    Delhi is the worst-affected among India cities, where several hospitals have flagged a growing shortage of oxygen, beds and medicines amid a rise in cases, and approached the courts for help.

    The worst-hit Indian state of Maharashtra, of which Mumbai is capital, is among the five provinces leading the surge in India, accounting for 67,013 fresh cases on Friday.

    Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, held a series of high-level meetings to review the COVID-19 situation in the country with the Supreme Court calling the public health crisis a national emergency and directing the government to prepare a national plan.

    Concerns about the rising cases in India have led some countries to impose travel restrictions on India.

    While the United Arab Emirates suspended all flights from India, including transit passengers, Canada will also ban passenger flights from India and Pakistan from Friday for 30 days.

    India is the worst-affected country worldwide after the US, which has logged 31.9 million cases.

    It is recording its highest number of new COVID-19 cases, in a second wave that began in mid-February.

    Experts attribute the rapid spread of cases to people’s failure in observing safety measures, as well as to the presence of more infectious variants of the virus.

  • JUST IN: Nigeria takes delivery Of 100,000 more AstraZeneca vaccines from India

    JUST IN: Nigeria takes delivery Of 100,000 more AstraZeneca vaccines from India

    The federal government on Tuesday said an additional 100,000 doses of the Oxford/Astrazeneca vaccine has been received from India.

    Chairman of the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19, Boss Mustapha made the announcement during a press briefing in Abuja.

    The vaccines, donated by the government of India to Nigeria, will help boost the number of Nigerians to be vaccinated by about 50,000, Mr Mustapha said.

     

    More details later…

  • India logs more than 100,000 virus cases in biggest spike so far

    India logs more than 100,000 virus cases in biggest spike so far

    India, on Monday, reported its biggest-ever daily surge in coronavirus cases since the pandemic began, with the country crossing 100,000 infections for the first time.

    There were 103,558 new cases in the past 24 hours, data released by the Health Ministry showed.

    India’s national count was more than 5,500 cases higher than the previous peak of 97,894 reported on Sept. 17 last year.

    Another 478 fatalities took the death toll to 165,101.

    India is battling the second wave of COVID-19, which is driven by surging infections in the country’s richest state Maharashtra that has accounted for 57,074 cases.

    Amid fears that the health care system could run out of capacity, Prime Minister Narendra Modi held a senior-level meeting to review the situation and expert teams were rushed to Maharashtra and the two other worst-affected states.

    Authorities in Maharashtra have announced new restrictions including a night curfew in the state and a “strict lockdown” over the weekends, in place from Friday at 8.00 p.m. until Monday at 7.00 a.m. in order to tackle the virus surge.

    Several affected states have also re-introduced restrictions that were relaxed earlier, including closing educational institutions and restricting numbers at marriages and social functions.

    The government is also pressing ahead with its vaccination programme, which was opened to all people above 45 years of age last week.

    The country aims to vaccinate more than 300 million people by the end of July.

    India has logged the third-highest number of cases in the world after the United States and Brazil.

  • Indian minister tests positive after getting COVID-19 vaccine trial dose

    Indian minister tests positive after getting COVID-19 vaccine trial dose

    Health Minister of the northern Indian state of Haryana Anil Vij, who was given a trial dose of a Coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccine in November, tested positive for the virus on Saturday.

    Vij, who is the holding charge of several ministries including health, said on Twitter that he had contracted the virus.

    He urged people, who came in contact with him in recent days to undergo a test.

    “I have been tested COVID-19 positive.

    “I am admitted in civil hospital Ambala cantonment.

    “All those who have come in close contact to me are advised to get themselves tested for COVID-19,” Vij wrote.

    In November, 67-year-old Vij was administered a trial dose of a COVID-19 vaccine as part of the third phase trial of Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin.

    He had earlier announced that he would be the first volunteer in his state for the vaccine.

    Haryana state has so far reported 240,841 cases of COVID-19 and 2,539 related deaths.

    On Saturday morning, the federal health ministry said the number of COVID-19 cases in the country has reached 9,608,211 and the death toll has risen to 139,700.

    India is in the grip of the ongoing COVID-19 and globally it is the second worst-hit country by the pandemic.

  • Muslim man arrested for trying to convert woman to Islam

    Muslim man arrested for trying to convert woman to Islam

    Police in India’s northern state of Uttar Pradesh have arrested a Muslim man for allegedly trying to convert a Hindu woman to Islam, officials said on Thursday.

    The 20-year-old college student is the first to be held under a new anti-conversion law aimed at curbing `love jihad’, a term radical Hindu groups use in accusing Muslim men of converting Hindu women through marriage.

    The law has triggered a furore, with critics calling it Islamophobic and unconstitutional. The arrest was made in the Bareilly district on Wednesday and the man was sent to 14 days in jail pending investigations.

    “We have made the arrest on the basis of a complaint filed by the girl’s family. The allegation is that the man abducted her earlier and was forcing her to change her religion,’’ senior police officer Sansar Singh said.

    The man told domestic media that he was innocent and he had no connection with the woman.

    The new law carries a maximum punishment of 10 years in jail with fines.

    The case was registered on Saturday, the same day that Uttar Pradesh became the first state in India to enact the law, called Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Ordinance.

    In recent weeks, four more states, Assam, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana and Karnataka, have revealed plans to enact laws against forced and fraudulent religious conversions.

    Opposition parties and social campaigners have slammed the move, saying `love jihad’ laws are being pushed by the governing party and Hindu groups aiming to create a Hindu nation state.

  • India suspends all international flights till next year

    India suspends all international flights till next year

    India virtually shut itself against the world on Thursday when it extended the suspension of scheduled international commercial passenger services till December 31.

    The aviation authorities said the extended suspension was because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

    India is the second worst-hit country by the virus, after the United States.

    It has recorded 9,266,705 infections and over 135,261 deaths, as at Thursday.

    The extension of the suspended commercial flights was announced on Thursday by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA).

    It did so in a notification titled ‘Travel and Visa restrictions related to COVID-19’.

    READ ALSO 25 rescued, 50 trapped in collapsed 5-storey building in India
    It said: “In partial modification of circular dated 26-06-2020, the competent authority has further extended the validity of circular issued on the subject cited above regarding Scheduled International commercial passenger services to/from India till 2359 hrs of 31St December, 2020.”

  • Facebook bans India’s ruling party leader over hate speech violations

    Facebook bans India’s ruling party leader over hate speech violations

    Facebook has banned a politician from India’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) at the centre of allegations that the social media giant did not apply hate speech rules to members of the ruling party.

    “We have banned Raja Singh from Facebook for violating our policy prohibiting those that promote or engage in violence and hate from having a presence on our platform.

    “The process for evaluating potential violators is extensive and it is what led us to our decision to remove his account,” a Facebook spokesperson said on Thursday.

    The move came a day after a parliamentary panel questioned Facebook India representatives following a report in the Wall Street Journal that alleged the company overlooked hate speech posts by leaders and right-wing Hindu groups affiliated with the BJP.

    The paper had reported that a top executive, Ankhi Das, opposed applying hate-speech rules to profiles in Singh’s name, which posted content calling Muslims traitors.

    The posts by Singh, a lawmaker in the southern state Telangana, were also flagged by the opposition during the hearing.

    Facebook denied any bias and said it is a non-partisan platform.

    Singh claimed he did not have any official Facebook page as he stopped using the platform in April 2019, therefore banning him “made no sense.”

    He said earlier his official Facebook account was “hacked” in 2018, adding that “many (Facebook) pages are using my name … I’m not responsible for any of their posts.”

    The BJP has also accused Facebook of bias against it, accusing the company’s employees of abusing Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

  • Twitter account of India’s Modi hacked

    Twitter account of India’s Modi hacked

    The official Twitter account of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s personal website was hacked early on Thursday, the social media company has confirmed.

    A series of tweets were sent from the account asking its followers to donate cryptocurrency to the prime minister’s relief fund.

    Twitter said it was aware of the activity and had taken steps to secure the compromised account.

    Narendramodi_in is the official Twitter handle for Modi’s personal website.

    It has more than 2.5 million followers and was created in May 2011.

    Modi’s personal Twitter account, with more than 61 million followers, was unaffected by the incident.

    “We are actively investigating the situation.

    “At this time, we are not aware of additional accounts being impacted,” a Twitter spokeswoman said in an emailed statement.

    The tweets were subsequently taken down and the account restored.

    In July, hackers accessed Twitter’s internal systems to hijack some of the platform’s top profiles including those of U.S. presidential contender Joe Biden, former U.S. president Barack Obama, Tesla founder Elon Musk, and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.

    The corporate accounts for Uber and Apple were also compromised in the major breach, according to reports.

  • Sad! Fire razes isolation centre killing 10 COVID-19 patients

    Sad! Fire razes isolation centre killing 10 COVID-19 patients

    There was a fire outbreak on Sunday morning at a Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) isolation centre in India that left 10 COVID-19 patients dead.

    Ten other COVID-19 patients were injured in the tragedy that happened in Andhra Pradesh’s Vijaywada hotel that was converted into a COVID-19 care centre.

    The cause of fire was yet to be ascertained at the time of filing this report, but it was said the fire outbreak might have been as a result of a short circuit.

    The surviving COVID-19 patients have been shifted to another hospital, Zee News reported.

    “The hotel was taken on lease and run by Ramesh Hospitals, a private hospital where COVID-19 patients were being treated. 40 patients & 10 medical staff were at the hotel at the time of the incident,” Andhra Pradesh Home Minister said.

    Andhra Pradesh government has announced an ex-gratia of Rs 50 lakh each to every deceased family.

    President Ram Nath Kovind on Sunday condoled families, who lost members in the fire.

    “Struck with grief after hearing tragic news about COVID-19 care centre in Vijayawada where an accidental fire caused loss of lives. My thoughts and prayers are with the bereaved families. I wish speedy recovery for the injured,” the President tweeted.

    Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and Union Minister Amit Shah have also expressed grief over the incident.

  • India tops a million coronavirus cases as pandemic hits villages

    India tops a million coronavirus cases as pandemic hits villages

    India on Friday became the third country in the world to record more than one million coronavirus cases, behind only the United States and Brazil.

    This is as infections spread further out into the countryside and smaller towns.

    For India’s population of around 1.3 billion, experts say a million cases are still low and the number will rise significantly in the coming months as testing is expanded.

    India recorded 34,956 new infections on Friday, taking the total so far to 1.004 million, with 25,602 deaths from COVID-19, Federal Health Ministry data showed.

    That compares to some 3.6 million cases in the U.S. and two million in Brazil – both countries with populations under 400 million.

    Epidemiologists say India is still likely months away from hitting its peak of cases, suggesting the country’s already overburdened healthcare system will come under further strain.

    “In the coming months, we are bound to see more and more cases, and that is the natural progression of any pandemic,’’ said Giridhar Babu, epidemiologist at the non-profit Public Health Foundation of India.

    “As we move forward, the goal has to be lower mortality… a critical challenge states will face is how to rationally allocate hospital beds,’’ he said.

    The last four months of the pandemic sweeping India have exposed severe gaps in the country’s healthcare system, which is one of the most poorly funded and has for years lacked enough doctors or hospital beds.

    The Indian government has defended a strict lockdown it imposed in March to contain the virus spread, saying it helped keep death rates low and allowed time to beef up the healthcare infrastructure.

    But public health experts say shortages remain, and could hit hard in the coming months.

    “As a public health measure, I don’t think the lockdown had much impact.

    “It just delayed the virus spread,’’ said Dr Kapil Yadav, Assistant Professor of Community Medicine at New Delhi’s Premier All India Institute of Medical Sciences.

    The million cases so far recorded likely left out many asymptomatic ones, he said.

    “It’s a gross underestimate.’’

    Millions of migrant workers, left stranded in the cities by the lockdown in March, took long journeys home on foot, some dying on the way while others left without work or wages.

    Several states, including Bihar in the east, to which many of the migrants returned, have witnessed a surge in cases in recent weeks as the lockdown has been eased to salvage a sagging economy.

    Babu estimates India won’t see a single nationwide peak.

    “The surges are shifting from one place to another, so we cannot say there will be one peak for the whole country.

    “In India, it’s going to be a sustained plateau for some time and then it will go down.’’