New Delhi: The death toll due to COVID-19 rose to 2,549 and the number of cases climbed to 78,003 on Thursday, registering an increase of 134 deaths and 3,722 cases in the last 24 hours since Wednesday 8 am, according to the Union health ministry.
The number of active COVID-19 cases stood at 49,219 while 26,234 people have recovered and one patient has migrated, it said.
“Thus, around 33.63% patients have recovered so far,” a senior health ministry official said. The total confirmed cases include foreign nationals too.
A total 134 deaths deaths were reported since Wednesday morning, of which 54 were in Maharashtra, 29 in Gujarat, 20 in Delhi, 9 in West Bengal, seven in Madhya Pradesh, four in Rajasthan, three in Tamil Nadu, two each in Telangana and Karnataka and one each in Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Jammu and Kashmir and Uttar Pradesh.
Of the 2,549 fatalities, Maharashtra tops tally with 975 fatalities, Gujarat comes second with 566 deaths, followed by Madhya Pradesh at 232, West Bengal at 207, Rajasthan at 121, Delhi at 106, Uttar Pradesh at 83,Tamil Nadu at 64 and Andhra Pradesh at 47.
The death toll reached 34 Telangana, 33 in Karnataka and 32 in Punjab. Haryana and Jammu and Kashmir have reported 11 fatalities each due to the respiratory disease while Bihar has registered seven and Kerala has reported four deaths.
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Jharkhand, Chandigarh and Odisha have recorded three COVID-19 fatalities each while Himachal Pradesh and Assam have reported two deaths each. Meghalaya, Uttarakhand and Puducherry have reported one fatality each, according to the ministry data.
According to the ministry’s website, more than 70% of the deaths are “due to co-morbidities”.
According to the health ministry data updated in the morning, the highest number of confirmed cases in the country is from Maharashtra at 25,922 followed by Gujarat at 9,267, Tamil Nadu at 9,227, Delhi at 7,998, Rajasthan at 4,328, Madhya Pradesh at 4,173 and Uttar Pradesh at 3,729.
The number of COVID-19 cases has gone up to 2,290 in West Bengal, 2,137 in Andhra Pradesh and 1,924 in Punjab.
It has risen to 1,367 in Telangana, 971 in Jammu and Kashmir, 959 in Karnataka, 940 in Bihar and 793 in Haryana.
Kerala has reported 534 coronavirus cases so far, while Odisha has 538 cases. A total of 187 people have been infected with the virus in Chandigarh and 173 in Jharkhand.
Tripura has reported 155 cases, Assam has 80 cases, Uttarakhand has 72, Himachal Pradesh has 66 cases, Chhattisgarh has 59 and Ladakh has registered 43 cases so far.
Thirty-three COVID-19 cases have been reported from the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
Meghalaya and Puducherry have registered 13 cases each while Goa has seven COVID-19 cases.
Manipur has two cases. Mizoram, Arunachal Pradesh and Dadar and Nagar Haveli have reported a case each till how.
“Our figures are being reconciled with the ICMR,” the ministry said on its website. State-wise distribution is subject to further verification and reconciliation, it said.
‘Coronavirus may never go away’
That was the grim assessment from World Health Organisation emergencies expert Mike Ryan on Wednesday, as he warned against any attempt to predict how long the coronavirus would keep circulating, saying it could just become endemic like HIV
The world had some control over how it coped with the disease, Ryan went on to say, although this would take a “massive effort” even if a vaccine was found – a prospect he described as a “massive moonshot”.
More than 100 potential vaccines are being developed, including several in clinical trials, but experts have underscored the difficulties of finding vaccines that are effective against coronaviruses.
Moscow says it ascribed over 60% of coronavirus deaths in April to other causes
The city of Moscow said on Wednesday it had ascribed the deaths of more than 60% of coronavirus patients in April to other causes as it defended what it said was the superior way it and Russia counted the number of people killed by the novel virus.
At 242,271, Russia has the second-highest number of confirmed cases in the world after the United States, something it attributes to a massive testing programme which it says has seen almost 6 million tests conducted.
But with 2,212 coronavirus deaths, Russia also has one of the world’s lowest mortality rates. Moscow, the epicentre of the country’s outbreak, accounts for 1,232 of those deaths.
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The disparity between the high number of cases and the relatively low number of deaths has prompted Kremlin critics and various Western and Russian media outlets to question the veracity of Russia’s official death statistics.
South Korea to boost coronavirus tracing privacy amid fears of backlash
South Korean health authorities said on Thursday they would revise their practice of publicising the travel routes of coronavirus patients due to fears of a backlash against people who attended nightclubs at the centre of a new outbreak.
After weeks of nearly no new domestic coronavirus cases, South Korea has seen a new spike in infections centred around nightclubs and bars in some of Seoul’s most popular nightlife neighbourhoods.
Investigators have struggled to find around 2,000 people wanted for testing, an effort complicated by public criticism of the clubgoers, as well as concerns about discrimination as several of the clubs cater to members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) community.
While clubs and bars were required to log the names and contact phone numbers for all visitors as a condition of reopening, much of the information turned out to be incomplete or false, officials said.
That has left officials combing through cellphone location data and CCTV footage to try to identify some customers, while publicly pleading for people to come forward and be tested.
Officials say they understand some individuals may fear social stigmatisation, and have promised to try to reduce the amount of information usually released about confirmed patients.
Wisconsin Supreme Court invalidates state’s COVID-19 stay-at-home order
The Wisconsin Supreme Court struck down a statewide coronavirus stay-at-home order on Wednesday, siding with a legal challenge from Republican lawmakers who said the state’s top public health official exceeded her authority by imposing the restrictions.
While lockdown orders meant to quell the pandemic have been challenged in court in several US states, the decision in Wisconsin marked the first such lawsuit to succeed in a larger political debate over social distancing that has grown increasingly partisan.
At stake in Wisconsin was a “Safer at Home” order that had been extended through May 26 by the state’s secretary for the Department of Health Services, Andrea Palm, acting at the direction of Governor Tony Evers.
The court ruled that while Evers, a first-term Democrat, possesses emergency powers as governor, the stay-at-home directive was effectively imposed by Palm, whose discretion as a political appointee is more limited.
“We further conclude that Palm’s order confining all people to their homes, forbidding travel and closing businesses exceeded the statutory authority … upon which Palm claims to rely,” the court said.
Evers said he was “disappointed” by the ruling but urged the public to adhere to social distancing practices as the best way to curb the spread of a highly contagious and potentially deadly respiratory virus for which there is no vaccine and no cure.
“Just because the Supreme Court says it’s okay to open, doesn’t mean that science does,” the governor wrote on Twitter. “We need everyone to continue doing their part to keep our families, our neighbours and our communities safe by continuing to stay safer at home, practice social distancing, and limit travel.”
UN warns of global mental health crisis due to COVID-19 pandemic
A mental illness crisis is looming as millions of people worldwide are surrounded by death and disease and forced into isolation, poverty and anxiety by the pandemic of COVID-19, United Nations health experts said on Thursday.
“The isolation, the fear, the uncertainty, the economic turmoil – they all cause or could cause psychological distress,” said Devora Kestel, director of the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) mental health department.
Presenting a UN report and policy guidance on COVID-19 and mental health, Kestel said an upsurge in the number and severity of mental illnesses is likely, and governments should put the issue “front and centre” of their responses.
“The mental health and wellbeing of whole societies have been severely impacted by this crisis and are a priority to be addressed urgently,” she told reporters at a briefing.
(With agency inputs)