Here are the top updates from Wednesday:

  1. Kerala recorded 30,196 new coronavirus cases. This was 17.16% higher than Tuesday’s tally of 25,772 infections. The state’s total count of infections since the Covid-19 outbreak in January last year rose to 42,83,494. With 181 deaths, the state’s toll went up to 22,001.
  2. India registered 37,875 new Covid-19 infections, after which the cumulative tally of cases in the country rose to 3,30,96,718. The new cases were 21.3% higher than Tuesday’s figure of 31,222. India’s toll rose to 4,41,411 with 369 more deaths.
  3. The Supreme Court said that it cannot issue generalised directives to the Centre to introduce a door-to-door Covid-19 vaccination policy. “You cannot ask the same thing, in one stroke of the brush, for the entire country,” the court told the petitioners.
  4. The Maharashtra government said it would not allow people to visit pandals on Ganesh Chaturthi on September 10, PTI reported. Devotees can pay obeisance to the deity virtually, the Uddhav Thackeray-led government said.
  5. Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin also announced that public gatherings would not be permitted for religious festivals, including for Vinayaka Chaturthi, The News Minute reported.
  6. Odisha issued guidelines for more stringent implementation of Covid-19 rules in schools, PTI reported. Out of the 762 cases new cases in the state, 102 are among children aged 0-18. The government said that students showing even minor symptoms should not be allowed to attend classes. Schools also need to ensure that they have arrangements for thermal screening and sanitisers at their entrances.
  7. The number of vaccine doses administered in India crossed 71 crore on Wednesday. As of 7 pm, health workers across the country had administered over 73 lakh doses.
  8. World Health Organization official Mike Ryan said Covid-19 is likely to become endemic, CNBC reported. “I think this virus is here to stay with us and it will evolve like influenza pandemic viruses, it will evolve to become one of the other viruses that affects us,” he added.
  9. The Canadian railways directed all its employees to be fully inoculated against Covid-19 by November 1, Reuters reported.
  10. Globally, Covid-19 has infected more than 22.18 crore people and led to over 45.85 lakh deaths since the beginning of the pandemic in December 2019, according to John Hopkins University.