Coronavirus LIVE Update: India's Cases Rise To 59,92,532; 94,503 Dead

Australia Eases Restrictions

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morisson stated that hospitals will resume many elective surgeries and schools will be re-opened for more children.

Staff In Pune Hospital Test Positive

25 hospital staff including 19 nurses tested positive for COVID-19 in Ruby Hall Clinic: Bomi Bhote, Chief Executive Officer, Ruby Hall Clinic in Pune

Delhi Patient Responds Well To Plasma Therapy

A patient from Delhi is being treated through plasma therapy at Max hospitals.

The 49-year-old male patient from Delhi, who had tested positive for coronavirus infection on April 4, has shown “progressive improvement”, said the hospital. “He was weaned off ventilator support on April 18. He has been shifted to a room with round-the-clock monitoring at present,” the hospital said. “He has started taking oral feed since Sunday and is faring well.”

Waste Management Guidelines

Using double-layered bags, mandatory labelling and color-coded bins for the management of waste generated during the diagnostics and treatment of suspected and confirmed COVID-19 patients are part of the guidelines issued by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB).

The apex pollution monitoring body said specific guidelines are required to be followed by all, including isolation wards, quarantine centres, sample collection centres, laboratories, ULBs and common biomedical waste treatment and disposal facilities, in addition to existing practices under BMW Management Rules, 2016.

The CPCB has also written to the state pollution control boards and pollution control committees to consider operation of common bio-medical waste treatment and disposal facility and its associated staff as essential service part of health infrastructure.

Zydus To Join Trials For COVID-19

Zydus Cadila on Monday said it could soon start a trial to see the effectiveness of pegylated interferon-alpha-2b as a treatment for Covid-19, joining the global effort to find a way to stop the spread of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes the disease.

Ahmedabad-based Zydus has initiated talks with the Department of Biotechnology for a compassionate trial. It is also working with the USFDA to register the drug for “compassionate use programme”

Sales Of Many Other Antiviral Drugs Fall

Medicine sales have fallen in the country amid the Covid-19 pandemic as the lockdown measures seem to have helped significantly reduce the incidence of other infectious diseases.

After early panic buying in March, pharmacies are now left with large stock of drugs with few takers, industry insiders said.

Sales of anti-infectives have fallen 34% month on month so far in April while sales of respiratory drugs (excluding asthma products) have dropped 20% and those of painkillers fell 27%, data from All India Organisation of Chemists and Druggists (AIOCD) shows

India Spent More Than 100 Crores On Testing

India has spent more than 100 crore rupees on testing through the Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT- PCR) testing kits. Each test is roughly estimated to charge around 2500 rupees and the ICMR has claimed to have tested over 4 lakh samples 

Delhi Health Minister Satyendra Jain confirmed one positive case at the Rashtrapati Bhavan

UN Members Ask For Equitable Access To COVID-19 Vaccine

The 193 members of the UN General Assembly have adopted by consensus a resolution that calls for "equitable, efficient and timely" access to any future vaccines developed to fight coronavirus.

Worst Of The Virus Yet To Come: WHO Chief

Director General of the World Health Organisation, Dr. Tedros Ghebreyesus warned that the worst is yet ahead of us with regards to the current coronavirus outbreak, stating that this is a disease everybody should fight together.

He did not state his reasons for making this statement.