Here are the top updates from Tuesday:
- Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Tuesday announced that the night curfew and Sunday lockdowns in the state would no longer continue, ANI reported. The restrictions had been imposed after the daily caseload in the state rose to more than 30,000 in August. On Tuesday, Vijayan also said that classes for final year, undergraduate and postgraduate students in higher educational institutions will begin from October 4. Meanwhile, Kerala recorded 25,772 new cases of Covid-19 in the last 24 hours, while 189 people died due to the infection.
- India registered 31,222 new coronavirus cases, pushing the cumulative tally of infections since the pandemic began in January last year to 3,30,58,843. The toll increased to 4,41,042 after 290 deaths were recorded in the plast 24 hours. The country presently has 3,92,864 active cases of Covid-19.
- The Delta variant of the coronavirus is eight times more likely to evade immunity against the disease built through previous infections or vaccines, a study published in the Nature magazine found. The study also concluded that the variant was six times more likely to re-infect people who have recovered from Covid-19.
- Mumbai Mayor Kishori Pednekar urged residents to celebrate the Ganesh Chaturthi festival at their homes. She warned residents that the third wave of the coronavirus pandemic was “already here”. The Maharashtra chief minister and health minister have also asked residents to stay at home during the festival, which begins on September 10.
- West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said that the decision on allowing people to visit pandals at night during the Durga Puja festival will be taken later, depending on the potential impact of the third wave of the pandemic, ANI reported.
- The Jharkhand government claimed in the Assembly that nobody had died in the state due to shortage of oxygen supply, The Times of India reported.
- The Union government said that over 1.13 crore doses of the coronavirus vaccine had been administered in the last 24 hours, ANI reported. Tuesday marked the fourth time in the last 12 days when more than one crore doses have been administered.
- A court in Vietnam sentenced a 28-year old man to five years in jail for violating Covid-19 quarantine protocols and spreading the virus, Reuters reported.
- The total number of Covid-19 cases in the United States went past four crore, CNN reported. The country, which is battling a fresh outbreak of the Delta variant, has logged over 40 lakh cases in the last four weeks.
- Covid-19 has infected more than 22.12 crore people and led to over 45.78 lakh deaths since the beginning of the pandemic in December 2019, according to Johns Hopkins University.
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