In the steepest spike witnessed so far, India has recorded 195 deaths, 3,900 cases of Coronavirus in the past 24 hours taking total fatalities to 1,568 and number of infections to 46,433, according to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare data released on Tuesday.
Of the total cases, 32,134 are active and 12,727 people have been cured.
Maharashtra remains the worst-hit state with the total number of cases rising to 14,541 and 583 deaths.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi held a live video chat with Nobel Laureate Abhijeet Banerjee on dealing with the economic fall out of the COVID-19 crisis. Banerjee told Rahul that direct benefit transfers should go beyond the poorest people. “To give cash to people, we really need some machinery. Migrants may not have access to that. We should give a bunch of money available to the state government for them to try out new strategies.”
Globally, infections crossed 3.5 million with over 250,000 deaths on Tuesday according to Johns Hopkins University. The World Health Organization said on Monday that Washington had provided no evidence to support “speculative” claims by US president Donald Trump and Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, that the new coronavirus originated in a Chinese lab, AFP reports.
Meanwhile,a plane carrying aid supplies crashed in Somalia on Monday. The accident, involving an African Express Airways plane, killed seven people on board, reports The Guardian.
At a video-conference summit hosted by the European Union, Japan pledged more than $800 million while Germany offered €525 milion to curb coronavirus. Italy and Spain each said they would provide more than €100m, taking the total to $8 billion.