1. Kerala on Thursday registered 22,064 new coronavirus cases and 128 deaths. State Health Minister Veena George said 1,63,098 samples were tested in the last 24 hours. This is third consecutive day that the state has reported over 22,000 fresh infections. The state’s test positivity rate, which is the percentage of people who test positive for the virus out of those who have been tested overall, jumped to 13.53%. Earlier in the day, the state government announced a complete lockdown on July 31 and August 1. Meanwhile, a central team of six members will arrive in Kerala on Friday to help the state with its Covid-19 management.
  2. Karnataka and its capital Bengaluru also recorded a sharp increase in daily infections. New cases rose by 2,052 – 34% rise from Wednesday’s tally of 1,531, NDTV reported. With this, the state’s tally stood at 29,01,247. Bengaluru logged 505 cases, also 34% jump from the previous count of 376.
  3. India on Thursday morning recorded 43,509 coronavirus cases, pushing the infection tally to 3,15,28,114 since the pandemic broke out in January last year. The number of new infections is marginally lower than Wednesday’s count of 43,654. However, the number of active cases climbed by 4,404 to 4,03,840. With 640 new deaths, the toll mounted to 4,22,662.
  4. Restrictions in Mumbai and 24 other districts of Maharashtra may be relaxed, state Health Minister Rajesh Tope said, according to PTI. He added that the government was considering to allow fully vaccinated citizens to travel by local trains in Mumbai. “A decision with a detailed set of instructions will be out in a couple of days,” he said.    
  5. The delta variant of Covid-19 is spreading in China’s Nanjing city, Bloomberg reported. New infections are giving rise to clusters of cases in China despite strict quarantine measures and mass testing.
  6. The West Bengal government extended Covid-19 restrictions till August 15 but has eased certain curbs, ANI reported. Government programmes will be allowed at indoor venues with 50% seating capacity. Night curfew will last from 9 pm to 5 am.
  7. Fully vaccinated travellers from the United States and most of Europe will not need to undergo quarantine for Covid-19 in England. The changes will be effective from 4 am on August 2. However, India still remains on the red list. This means that only British or Irish citizens or those who have residence rights in the UK will be allowed entry from India. But even then, they would have to undergo mandatory quarantine.  
  8. Brazil has provisionally suspended its decision to grant temporary Emergency Use Authorisation to Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin for the import of 4 million, or 40 lakh, coronavirus vaccine doses. Brazilian healthcare regulator Anvisa said it shelved its decision after Bharat Biotech terminated its pact to sell the vaccine doses to Precisa Medicamentos and Envixia Pharmaceuticals, the biotechnology company’s intermediaries in Brazil.  
  9. Australia’s largest city Sydney on Thursday registered its highest single-day rise in Covid-19 cases. The Australian government has decided to deploy military in the New South Wales state to enforce a lockdown poised to enter its sixth week. The state recorded 239 cases in the past 24 hours in the biggest daily rise since the pandemic begun.  
  10. Globally, Covid-19 has infected 19.61 crore people and caused 41.91 lakh deaths since the pandemic broke out in December 2019, according to Johns Hopkins University.