Coronavirus India: news summary for Thursday 23 July

Delhi policeman tests positive for Covid-19 for a second time

A 50-year-old policeman has reported a recurrence of Covid-19 infection. The policeman, who is currently admitted to Indraprastha Apollo hospital, first tested positive in May but had no symptoms so resumed duty. On 10 July, he complained of fever and dry cough and was tested through rapid antigen and RT-PCR on 13 July. Both reports were positive.

It is still not known whether someone can catch Covid-19 more than once - one theory being that positive tests reveal dead virus left in her body from the previous infection.

WHO says U.S. Brazil and India can 'deal with' pandemic

(Reuters) The World Health Organization said on Thursday that the United States, Brazil and India, which are all suffering fast rises in coronavirus cases, can still get on top of the pandemic.

They are "powerful, able, democratic countries who have tremendous internal capacities to deal with this disease", Dr Mike Ryan, head of the WHO emergencies programme, told a Geneva briefing.

U.S. coronavirus cases exceeded 4 million on Thursday, with over 2,600 new cases recorded every hour on average, the highest rate in the world, according to a Reuters tally.

Coronavirus

Coronavirus: India records highest single-day recovery rate

India records highest single-day recovery rate

According to a statement released by the Union Health Ministry, India has reported its highest ever single-day count of recoveries, with 28,472 Covid-19 patients discharged from hospitals and isolation centres in the latest 24-hour cycle.

Full details:

A health worker prepares to collect swab samples from residents of a containment zone to test for the coronavirus in Kolkata on Thursday. India last week became the third country after the United States and Brazil to hit one million cases but many experts say that with testing rates low, the true number could be much higher.

(Photo: Dibyangshu SARKAR / AFP)

IndiGo airline to cut 10% of staff

Indian airline IndiGo has become the latest carrier to reveal how hard it has been hit by the collapse in demand for flights due to Covid-19.

The country's largest airline said it will shed 10% of its staff as it grapples with a slump in revenues. Last month, IndiGo said it would cut up to 40 billion rupees ($533m) in costs.

Almost one quarter of Dehli citizens have developed Covid-19 anti-bodies

With over 1.2 million positives, India has the 3rd-most coronavirus cases globally, only behind the U.S. and Brazil. Almost 30,000 people have died as a consequence of contracting coronavirus since the pandemic began in March of this year.

Lockdown provokes housework debate in India

In some Indian homes the housework is delegated to the hired domestic help - part-time cooks, cleaners and nannies. But what happens when the help can't come to work because there is a nationwide lockdown?

Via BBC Asia

Phase I of India vaccine trial outlined

The Phase-1 human clinical trials for Covaxin, a vaccine candidate for Covid-19 developed by Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech, have begun in Chennai's SRM Medical College Hospital and Research Centre. According to a news report in The News Minute, the first phase of the trials for the vaccine began at SRM hospital on Thursday.

Phase I of the trial will be done on healthy people, aged between 18 and 55 years, having no co-morbid conditions.

Full article via India Today here

Coronavirus

Delhi Airport imposes new restrictions on passengers arriving on international flights

Delhi Airport imposes new restrictions on passengers arriving on international flights

Delhi Airport has issued the latest guidelines for passengers arriving on international flights. Passengers with no onward connection will be subject to a mandatory health screening first by airport health officials and then at the Delhi government post, before undergoing a seven-day institutional quarantine.

Nearly a quarter of Delhi population have had coronavirus

Almost a quarter of people in the Indian capital of Delhi have been infected with the coronavirus, according to scientists, raising fears there could be many more cases in the country of 1.3 billion people.

Random testing of more than 20,000 people in Delhi by India’s national disease control centre found that 23.48% had antibodies to the virus. Adjusting for false positives and negatives, it was estimated that 22.86% of the population had been infected stated Sujeet Kumar Singh, who heads the institute.

Sinopharm says coronavirus vaccine could be ready by year-end

A coronavirus vaccine candidate developed by China National Pharmaceutical Group (Sinopharm) could be ready for public use by the end of this year, state media reported on Wednesday, ahead of a previous expectation it may become available in 2021.

Sinopharm Chairman Liu Jingzhen told state broadcaster CCTV the company expects to finish late-stage human testing within about three months.

Sinopharm's unit China National Biotec Group (CNBG), which is responsible for two coronavirus vaccine projects, said in June the shot may not be ready until at least 2021 as a lack of new infections in China made it difficult to find people to test it on.

Coronavirus: India snapshot

Insight Online News offer a state by state breakdown of the Covid-19 situation in the nation. There have now been 1.2 million positive cases with the virus responsible for almost 30,000 deaths in India. 

Labourers work in a paddy field at Gunowal village on the outskirts of the northern Indian city of Amritsar in Punjab. Farmers in the state have turned to mechanised planting of seeds this year because the coronavirus has prevented hundreds of thousands of migrant labourers from coming to the region.

photo: REUTERS/Munish Sharma

Indian inspiration from the pandemic

“I am amazed at how we have adapted to the new normal within a short span of time,” says Tamil writer and activist Sivasankari Chandrasekaran. 

“Events, seminars, classes and even social interactions are today happening on the virtual world. I gave a 45-minute talk to members of the Singapore Writers Association this past week. Adapting to a changing world is crucial, and staying emotionally stable is the need of the hour.”

India cancels historic Amarnath Yatra as coronavirus cases mount

India has cancelled a historic Hindu pilgrimage to a holy cave high in the snow-capped mountains of contested Kashmir for the first time, as cases of the novel coronavirus continued to rise on Wednesday. 

There were 37,724 new cases reported in the past 24 hours, according to federal health data released on Wednesday. India has reported almost 1.2 million cases overall, behind only the United States and Brazil. 

Organisers of the Amarnath Yatra, where saffron-clad Hindu ascetics walk 46 km (28 miles) to the cave across glaciers and waterlogged trails, said a “very sharp” spike in coronavirus cases had forced the cancellation.

Coronavirus-related articles

Scroll through some of our latest items including Delhi airport restrictions, Madhya Pradesh's ten-day lockdown, and Covid-19 death rate decrease.

Surge in infections with factory workers post lockdown

As India’s coronavirus cases exceeded one million last week, unions say similar spikes in infections in reopened factories are putting workers at risk – accusing companies of skimping on health and safety as they rush to get business back on track.

It was only after several workers died and district authorities ordered a seven-day lockdown that Thengde’s plant in Maharashtra state finally closed on 10 July, weeks after calls for it to shut when the first cases appeared.

Experts call for national database on coronavirus

New Delhi India needs a centralised national database on everything related to the coronavirus disease (Covid-19), including standardised data on turnaround testing time, surveillance, home and hospital isolation, and proportion of cases among people with contact history , say epidemiologists and public health experts.

In an opinion article in The New York Times, the former head of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Tom Frieden recommended the compilation of standardised data on a range of parameters to better manage the pandemic that has so far infected 15,154,448 and killed 621,172 across the world. He wrote, specifically of the US that “we aren’t tracking the public health equivalent of vital signs” and that this is a “big reason the US is losing the battle against Covid-19”.

PM Modi gives keynote address at the India Ideas Summit

Listen to the Indian prime minister speak at the summit.

Covid-19 catch-up

Here is a selection of some of the coronavirus-related stories that have been making the headlines over the past 24 hours:

- Almost a quarter of Delhi may have had coronavirus, finds study

- Since Indian restrictions have been lifted, hospitals in major cities have been overwhelmed by a surging number of cases, exposing a lack of preparedness

- 3D printing is helping to save lives in this pandemic and the tech may be about to take off in India

- Delhi Airport imposes new restrictions on passengers arriving on international flights

- A designer from Birmingham has made a face mask for turban-wearing Sikhs

India coronavirus latest: 04:30 IST on Thursday 23 July (01:00 CEST)

According to the latest figures published by Johns Hopkins University, 15,056,149 cases have been detected worldwide, with 619,784 deaths and 8,557,991 people recovered.

In India, there have been 1,193,078 confirmed cases and 28,732 deaths, with 753,050 people recovered from the virus.

Coronavirus live news: India

Hello and welcome to our coverage of the Covid-19 pandemic as it affects India, including breaking news, stats and figures. 

India has now seen nearly 1.2 million cases of the new disease, and over 28,700 people have lost their lives to the pandemic.