1. The total number of Covid-19 cases in India reached 26,917 on Sunday evening and the toll rose to 826. The number of cases has jumped by 1,975 in 24 hours – surpassing the biggest single-day spike yet again. The toll jumped by 47.
  2. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will meet chief ministers on a video conference on Monday morning to discuss the way ahead in the fight against Covid-19.
  3. Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray said that 80% of the Covid-19 patients in the state are asymptomatic. Thackeray said that his government will take a decision on extending the lockdown by the end of April. The state, the worst-hit by the pandemic, reported 440 new cases and 19 deaths in a day, taking the total number of cases above 8,000.
  4. Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said his government will allow shops in neighbourhoods to open after the Centre relaxed certain guidelines to permit the functioning of select shops amid the nationwide lockdown to control the spread of Covid-19. Kejriwal, however, clarified that no such relaxation will be permitted in containment zones and that no malls or shopping complexes will be allowed to operate in the Capital. Delhi has 95 containment zones.
  5. Two hospitals in Delhi have been shut in the last 24 hours after staff members were found to be infected with the coronavirus. Hindu Rao Hospital, the biggest facility in North Delhi, was shut late Saturday after a nurse tested positive for Covid-19, while Babu Jagjivan Ram Memorial Hospital in Jahangirpuri is being sanitised after at least 44 employees contracted the virus.
  6. Prime Minister Narendra Modi praised Indians for being the driving force behind the country’s efforts to combat the coronavirus pandemic. In his address to the nation on Mann Ki Baat, Modi lauded the citizens for helping each other amid the health crisis.
  7. The Congress demanded that the Centre make public details about the availability of RNA extraction kits that are used in the testing for Covid-19 infection. Earlier in the day, The Indian Express had reported, quoting unidentified officials, that the country was left with only 3 lakh such kits, which would last only about a week.
  8. A senior government doctor in West Bengal died days after testing positive for the coronavirus. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee tweeted her condolences, saying that the doctor’s “sacrifice for the cause of ailing humanity will ever be in our hearts” and will make Covid-19 “warriors” fight the virus with “even greater determination”. However, the state government has not confirmed him to be a Covid-19 death yet.
  9. The Chinese city of Wuhan, where the Covid-19 pandemic originated in December, has no patients of the disease left in hospitals any more as of Sunday, the government said. The last patient who was hospitalised recovered on Sunday. According to the last bulletin of the National Health Commission, Wuhan had a total of 50,333 cases of Covid-19 till the end of Saturday – of whom 46,452 had been discharged and 3,869 had died, leaving behind 12 patients still infected, none of whom were in serious condition.
  10. Globally, Covid-19 has infected nearly 29.2 lakh people and caused over 2.03 lakh deaths in 185 countries or regions, according to the Johns Hopkins tracker.