India’s Coronavirus cases crossed the 14,000-mark on Saturday. According to the Union Health Ministry’s updated figures, the total number of cases in India has reached 14,378 of which 11,906 are active cases. The death toll has climbed to 480.
991 new COVID-19 cases and 43 deaths were reported in the last 24 hours.
Of the total fatalities, 201 was reported from Maharashtra, followed by Madhya Pradesh with 69 fatalities.
Maharashtra remains the worst-hit state with total number of positive cases rising to 3,323, followed by Delhi with 1,707, Tamil Nadu 1,323 and Madhya Pradesh 1,310, according to the Ministry data.
The doubling rate of COVID-19 cases in India has dropped to 6.2 days over the past week, as compared to three days before the lockdown was imposed last month by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the government said on Friday.
On Friday, RBI governor Shaktikanta Das said he would do “whatever it took” to help the staggered economy during the pandemic. Among other announcements, the RBI cut repo rate and pushed other banks to lend and provide liquidity support to struggling non-banks and ease asset classification norms.
The number of deaths linked to the novel Coronavirus worldwide has passed 150,000, according a Johns Hopkins University tally. It took 83 days for the first 50,000 deaths to be recorded and just eight more for the toll to climb to 100,000. It took another eight days to go from 100,000 to 150,000.
Over 2.2 million infections have been reported so far as international institutions are intensifying their collective efforts on battling the pandemic.
The United States passed 700,000 confirmed Coronavirus cases, according to a tally maintained by Johns Hopkins University. With the highest number of cases and deaths of any country in the world, the US had recorded 700,282 cases of COVID-19 and 36,773 deaths as of 8:30 pm.
Meanwhile, the International Monetary Fund has said that countries have taken fiscal measures and central banks together injected a total of whopping USD 14 trillion as part of their efforts to mitigate the challenges posed by the novel Coronavirus pandemic.
The World Bank Group (WBG) is expected to launch health emergency programs in over 100 countries by the end of April to support the fight against COVID-19, with 64 already in operation, President David Malpass said Friday.
The WBG will work to deploy as much as $160 billion over the next 15 months, tailored to the nature of the health, economic and social shocks that countries are facing during the pandemic, Malpass told a virtual press conference during the Spring Meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the WBG.