Coronavirus Live updates: 40K spike takes COVID tally to 11,18,043

Record spike of over 40k cases pushes India's COVID tally to 11,18,043

New Delhi: India's Coronavirus tally surged to 11,18,043 after recording a single-day jump of 40,425 fresh cases in the past 24 hrs, Union Health Ministry said in its daily update. The death toll due to the infection rose to 27,497 as 681 fatalities were reported since Sunday. The number of recovered COVID-19 patients continue to exceed active cases in India by 3,09,627.

Despite surging fresh coronavirus cases, India's COVID-19 case fatality rate is progressively falling and is currently at 2.49 per cent, which is one of the lowest in the world, the Union Health Ministry said on Sunday.7,00,086 people having recovered COVID-19 so far in India with 22,664 patients declared cured over the past 24 hrs. Meanwhile, a total of 1,40,47,908 samples have been tested for COVID as per the Indian Council of Medical Research till Sunday.

The All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) Ethics Committee on Saturday gave its approval for conducting the human clinical trial of the indigenously developed Covid-19 vaccine candidate Covaxin. The hospital will start enrolling healthy individuals from today onwards.

09:53 AM, 20th Jul

Partial lockdown in Australia's Melbourne

Australia's acting chief medical officer has warned that a spike in coronavirus cases in the city of Melbourne could take weeks to subside.Australia's second-largest city, the capital of the state of Victoria, is under partial lockdown due to the new spread. 

"We have learned over time that the time between introducing a measure and seeing its effect is at least two weeks and sometimes longer than that," acting chief medical officer Paul Kelly told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Victoria on Monday reported 275 new coronavirus cases — down from a daily record of 438 three days earlier.

Australia was lauded for being a global leader in battling COVID-19, but lapses in quarantine last month have led to a surge in new cases.

Aside from the partial lockdown, residents around Melbourne have also been ordered to wear face masks if they leave their homes.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews said it was too soon to tell if the measures were having an impact. "Until we bring some stability to this, we won't be able to talk about a trend," he said, referring to the drop in daily cases.

07:59 AM, 20th Jul

Germany records 249 new infections reported in the last 24 hours.

Germany has recorded a total of 201,823 coronavirus cases, with 249 new infections reported in the last 24 hours.

According to the latest figures from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases, the total number of deaths increased by two to 9,086.

Meanwhile, the southern state of Bavaria — which has recorded more cases and deaths than any other German state — announced that people returning from holiday might soon be tested for coronavirus at the airport upon arrival.

06:56 AM, 20th Jul

Beijing has not reported new cases in the past two weeks

The number of coronavirus cases in China's northwestern Urumqi city continues to rise with 17 new infections reported on Monday. This brings the total in China's latest outbreak to at least 47.

No new fatalities were reported, leaving the total death toll in China at 4,634 with 83,682 cases.

China had largely managed to contain local transmissions before the outbreak in Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang region.Beijing has not reported new cases in the past two weeks. City authorities said Sunday they were downgrading the emergency response level from two to three.