Here are the top updates on Sunday:
- Aam Aadmi Party MLA Atishi on Sunday said there were no more doses of Covid-19 vaccine Covaxin left with the Delhi government after Monday’s inoculations. She said the administration in Delhi was not informed about the supply of the next installment from the central government.
- India reported 2,40,842 new coronavirus cases, taking the infection tally to 26,530,132 since the pandemic first broke out in January 2020. The toll climbed by 3,741 to 2,99,266. There are 28,05,399 active cases and 2,34,25,467 patients have recovered from the infection so far.
- The United Kingdom’s government health body Public Health England said that two doses of the coronavirus vaccine developed by pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca has shown 60% efficacy against symptomatic infection caused due to the B.1.617.2 variant of the coronavirus that was first detected in India.
- Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan wrote to yoga guru Ramdev, asking him to withdraw his comment claiming that allopathy was a “stupid science”. The minister said that the comment had hurt the country’s sentiments.
- Four junior doctors of the Maharani Laxmi Bai Medical College in Uttar Pradesh’s Jhansi were taken into custody by the police after they tried to present a memorandum to Chief Minister Adityanath. The doctors were later released.
- Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal extended the lockdown in the city till May 31. He, however, said that an “unlocking” process will start if the daily cases continue to drop further. The Haryana and Puducherry governments also extended lockdowns till May 31.
- A meeting between the Centre and all states and Union Territories failed to arrive at a decision on when to hold the Class 12 board examinations. Consequently, the decision on holding various entrance examinations also could not be made.
- The Rajasthan government made it mandatory for those coming from outside the state to submit a negative RT-PCR test report, conducted within the last 72 hours. Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot also announced a three-tier lockdown in the state from May 24 to June 8.
- Bharatiya Janata Party President JP Nadda has written to party workers across the country to make themselves more visible in their activities in dealing with the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. The party faced criticism after its Delhi unit chief posted a photo with the minister of state for home affairs, posing with a packet of chips that were meant to be relief material.
- Globally, the coronavirus has now infected over 16.67 crore people and killed over 34.55 lakh since the pandemic broke out in December 2019, according to Johns Hopkins University.
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