Coronavirus roundup: Developments in India and rest of world

TIMESOFINDIA.COM / Mar 24, 2020, 20:01 IST

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Coronavirus roundup: Developments in India and rest of world

NEW DELHI: The number of coronavirus cases in India rose to 519 on Tuesday, according to health ministry data, as the Centre asked the states and Union territories to clamp curfew wherever necessary in the wake of people defying lockdown orders in several parts of the country. Here are the top developments from India and rest of the world on COVID-19:

A summary of top developments in India:

India

Centre advices state governments and Union territory administrations to impose curfew wherever necessary in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman extends deadline for filing GST returns for March-May to June 30.
Sitharaman said regulators and her ministry are monitoring developments and volatility in stock markets triggered by the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic.
Cabinet secretary Rajiv Gauba asked state governments to immediately identify and earmark hospitals to deal with the coronavirus outbreak.
The government has banned export of all sanitisers and ventilators with immediate effect.
At least 22 private laboratory chains having around 15,500 collection centres spread all over the country have been registered with the Indian Council of Medical Research till Tuesday for conducting COVID-19 tests, health ministry officials said.

States

All 75 districts in Uttar Pradesh will be under a three-day lockdown from Wednesday to fight the coronavirus outbreak, chief minister Yogi Adityanath announced while warning that a curfew may also be imposed in some areas.
Ten more coronavirus cases have been detected in Maharashtra, taking the number of COVID-19 patients in the state to 107, an official said. On the other hand, a dozen coronavirus patients undergoing treatment in Mumbai have been "cured", officials said.
Kerala reported 14 fresh cases of coronavirus on Tuesday, taking the total number of positive cases in the state to 105. A health worker is among those affected, chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan told reporters after a Covid19 review meeting this evening.
No fresh case of coronavirus has been reported from anywhere in Bihar. Total number of COVID-19 cases stood at three that included a death in the state.
A statewide curfew has been declared in Manipur after a 23-year-old woman tested positive for COVID-19.
Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal said no new coronavirus case has been reported in the national capital in the last 24 hours, and the biggest challenge now is to not let the situation go out of control.
A 67-year-old woman, the first coronavirus patient reported in the Kashmir valley, has been successfully treated. With three more persons testing positive in the Valley today, the number of cases has gone up to 7 in the Union territory.
Sikkim will be placed under lockdown from 6 am on Wednesday till March 31, a senior official said.
The Gujarat government has decided to keep all schools closed and promote students of Classes 1 to 9 and 11 of the state board, as the annual exams this year could not be conducted due to the coronavirus crisis.
The whole of Odisha will be under lockdown from Tuesday midnight as a precautionary measure to contain the coronavirus outbreak, a government official said. Fourteen of the state's 30 districts are already under a lockdown.
West Bengal was put under complete lockdown from 5 pm today to March 31, said chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday in the wake of COVID-19 pandemic. She said that a 'Procheshta Scheme' has also been launched under which the people who have lost their income will get Rs 1,000.

World

The number of deaths around the world from the novel coronavirus cases stood at 16,961, according to a tally compiled by AFP on Tuesday from official sources. More than 386,350 declared cases have been registered in 175 countries and territories since the epidemic first emerged in China in December.
The 2020 Tokyo Olympics have been postponed to no later than the summer of 2021 because of the coronavirus pandemic sweeping the globe, the International Olympic Committee announced today.
China has decided to lift the three-month lockdown on more than 56 million people in the central Hubei province, the epicentre of the deadly coronavirus outbreak. The prolonged lockdown of Hubei's capital Wuhan will end on April 8.
Iran has announced 122 new deaths from coronavirus, raising the official toll to 1,934 in one of the world's worst hit countries. Health ministry said a record 1,762 new cases have been confirmed in Iran over the past 24 hours and 24,811 people are now known to have been infected.
The number of cases of coronavirus in Italy is probably 10 times higher than the official tally of almost 64,000, the head of the agency that is collating the data said on Tuesday. Latest figures show 6,077 people have died from the infection in barely a month, making Italy the worst-affected country in the world.
Egypt will impose a two-week, nightly curfew in the Arab world's most-populous country in an effort to stop the spread of coronavirus, its Prime Minister Moustafa Madbouly announced.
Bangladesh has initiated a process to "conditionally" release jailed former PM Khaleda Zia for six months amid the coronavirus outbreak in the country.

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