1. Maharashtra reported its largest 24-hour increase in the number of novel coronavirus cases, with 1,494 more on Wednesday. Mumbai alone has 15,747 of the state’s 25,992 cases now. Mumbai has tested over 2,30,000 samples so far. Around 3 lakh people are in home quarantine and over 14,000 in institutional quarantine.
  2. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Wednesday briefed the media on the Rs 20 lakh crore-stimulus package announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to tide over the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic. “In order to provide more take home salary for employees and to give relief to employers in payment of provident fund, EPF contribution is being reduced for businesses and workers for three months, amounting to liquidity support of Rs 6,750 crore,” said Sitharaman. The finance minister also announced that the due date for filing income tax returns has been postponed from July 31 and October 31 to November 30 for 2019-’20. The rates for tax deducted at source and tax collected at source have been reduced by 25% till March 31, 2021.
  3. The number of coronavirus cases in India rose to 74,281 on Wednesday morning and the toll climbed to 2,415, according to the figures from the Union health ministry. The country recorded 3,525 new infections and 122 deaths in the last 24 hours. India is now the 12th most-affected country by the pandemic as the cases crossed the 74,000-mark, according to the latest real-time tally by Johns Hopkins University.
  4. The Prime Minister’s Office on Wednesday announced that Rs 3,100 crore from the PM Cares Fund trust will be used to buy ventilators, help migrant workers and support development of a vaccine against the new coronavirus..
  5. The Indian Council of Medical Research said it will begin antibody testing at the household-level to estimate the prevalence of Covid-19 infections among Indians. The survey will include 24,000 adults, distributed equally over four strata of districts that will be categorised on the basis of the spread of the infection.
  6. The Maharashtra government requested the Centre to send 20 companies of Central Armed Police Forces so that the police teams working round the clock get relief.
  7. The Congress and other Opposition parties on Wednesday criticised the Rs 20 lakh crore special economic package announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. While P Chidambaram said his party was “disappointed with the announcements”, Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee said the package announced contained “nothing for the states” and was “killing federalism”.
  8. Six crore Indians – 2.7 crore in their 20s and 3.3 crore in their 30s – lost their jobs in April, data released on Tuesday by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy showed.
  9. The International Monetary Fund warned that moving too early to reopen economies and rollback restrictions and lockdowns in Asia and Europe could lead to renewed coronavirus outbreaks. It said that economies in Asia and Europe should proceed carefully and resist the urge to do too much too soon.
  10. The Chinese city of Wuhan, the epicentre of the coronavirus outbreak, plans to conduct nucleic acid testing over a period of 10 days on the entire population after new coronavirus cases emerged for the first time in weeks.
  11. Globally, the coronavirus has infected more than 43.08 lakh people and claimed 2.94 lakh lives, according to the Johns Hopkins University tracker.