8.48 pm: Mumbai alone reports 1,059 new cases and 45 deaths, ANI reports citing the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation.

8.34 pm: Maharashtra reports 9,601 new cases and 322 deaths. With this, the state’s tally is now 4,31,719 including 15,316 deaths.

8.27 pm: Haryana adds 793 new cases and 7 deaths to its overall tally.

8.25 pm: Madhya Pradesh registers 808 new cases, taking the total count in the state to 32,614. The state also reports nine more deaths. With this, the toll is now 876.

8.16 pm: Mumabi Mayor Kishori Pednekar’s elder brother dies at Nair Hospital.

8.07 pm: Uttarakhand adds 264 new cases to its overall count. Now, the state’s tally is 7,447 including 83 deaths.

8.03 pm: Arunachal Pradesh Governor BD Mishra gets tested for Covid-19 after a policeman posted at the Raj Bhavan was found to be positive, reports PTI.

7.53 pm: Nagaland registers its highest single-day rise in new cases, with 130 more people testing positive, reports PTI. The state’s total count now stands at 1,823.

7.50 pm: Odisha registers its highest single-day surge of 1,602 new cases. With this, the state’s tally rises to 33,479 Saturday. The toll also goes up to 187 with 10 more deaths.

7.30 pm: Kerala’s tally nears 25,000 with 1,129 new cases and toll rises to 82 with nine more deaths, reports PTI.

7.28 pm: Assam Education Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma says they are planning to reopen schools, colleges and educational institutions from September 1. “However, final decision will be taken by the Centre,” he adds.

7.26 pm: State-wise figures

Karnataka: 5,172 new cases and 98 deaths, tally stands at to 1,29,287

Gujarat: 1,136 new cases and 24 deaths, tally rises to 62,574

Chandigarh: Tally stands at 1,079 of which 378 cases are active

7.11 pm: Senior BJP leader and former Andhra Pradesh minister Pydikondala Manikyala Rao dies while undergoing treatment at a private hospital in Vijayawada, reports The New Indian Express. The senior politician was admitted to a hospital in Eluru 20 days ago. He was shifted to a private hospital in Vijayawada a week ago when he complained of breathing problem.

6.55 pm: Jammu and Kashmir adds 613 new cases and 11 deaths to its tally, reports ANI. With this, the total cases in the Union Territory rise to 20,972 including 388 deaths.

6.37 pm: Tamil Nadu registers 5,879 new cases and 99 deaths in the last 24 hours, ANI reports citing the state health department. With this, the state’s tally rises to 2,51,738 including 4,034 deaths.

6.05 pm: Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia says the AAP government will again send a proposal to Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijlal on opening of hotels and weekly markets, reports PTI. “I request you [Home Minister Amit Shah] to ask LG not to stop it,” he writes in his letter to Shah.

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Covid-19: Manish Sisodia writes to Amit Shah after LG overrules decision on opening markets, hotels

6.01 pm: Andhra Pradesh’s tally crosses the 1.5-lakh mark with 9,276 fresh infections. The state’s toll rises by 58 to 1,407, reports PTI.

5.50 pm: Centre decides to allow export of indigenous ventilators as Covid-19 fatality rate falls, reports PTI.

5.23 pm: Himachal Pradesh’s tally rises to 2,596. There are 1,105 active cases, 1,462 recovered and 12 deaths.

5.14 pm: Three people have been arrested in Kolkata for allegedly duping people after taking money from them for Covid-19 tests, PTI reports citing the police.

5.11 pm: Fifty-three more people, including 27 security personnel, test positive in Meghalaya, reports PTI. With this, the state’s tally rises to 856.

4.30 pm: Uttar Pradesh’s tally rises to 89,068 with 3,807 fresh cases, reports PTI. The toll also climbs up to 1,677 with 47 more people succumbing to the virus.

4.29 pm: A total of 51,354 people have been discharged, says Uttar Pradesh Principal Health Secretary Amit Mohan Prasad. The state’s toll stands at 1,677.

4.27 pm: Four new cases detected in Mumbai’s Dharavi today, reports ANI citing the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation. Active cases in the area now stand at 72.

4.26 pm: Delhi reports 1,118 new cases and 26 deaths in the last 24 hours.

4.25 pm: Nabanna, the West Bengal state secretariat, will be closed on Monday and Tuesday for sanitisation after a sub-inspector tested positive, reports PTI. The SI was posted in the Chief Minister’s Office on the 14th floor. The SI’s wife has also tested positive, and both of them have been admitted to a hospital.

4.17 pm: The World Health Organisation has praised the Gujarat government for its measures in Ahmedabad to control the pandemic, reports PTI. “The patient recovery rate in Gujarat is much higher than other states at 73.09% while the death rate has dropped to 3.97%,” reads the state government’s press release.

4.10 pm: Telangana reports 2,083 new cases in record single-day surge, reports PTI

4.06 pm: India’s Case Fatality Rate stands at 2.15% today and it is lowest since the lockdown started in March, says the health ministry. It has been continuously reducing from around 3.33% in mid-June, it adds.

3.21 pm: Karnataka Agriculture Minister BC Patil says he and his wife have been under home quarantine after they tested positive for coronavirus.

3.20 pm: Union minister G Kishan Reddy says all the states must replicate “Delhi’s model” to combat the coronavirus crisis. Delhi’s daily count of cases has significantly decreased over the past few days and the government claims that the recovery is constantly improving.

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1.55 pm: Himachal Pradesh reports 10 new Covid-19 cases. The total number of cases is now 2,574, including 1,086 active cases, 1,459 recoveries and 12 deaths.

1.49 pm: France has reported 1,346 new cases in the last 24 hours, The Guardian reports. The number of clusters has increased by 15, taking the total number of clusters to 157. France now has 2,25,197 cases, including 30,268 deaths. The situation in France has worsened over the last week, after several weeks of less than 1,000 cases per day.

1.34 pm: The second round of serological survey has begun in Delhi on Saturday. The five-day survey will cover all districts. Samples will be collected from four districts, including North Delhi and North West Delhi on Saturday. A senior government official says 15,000 samples would be collected from August 1 to 5, in different areas and from different age groups. A sero-prevalence survey involves testing the blood serum of individuals to check for the prevalence of antibodies against a particular virus.

1.20 pm: Ayodhya Senior Superintendent of Police Deepak Kumar says that all security arrangements for laying the foundation stone of the Ram temple, ANI reports. All coronavirus-related protocols will be followed, he adds. Route diversions have been planned at 12 places to ease traffic movement. Kumar requests people not to gather in groups of more than five.

1 pm: Puducherry reports 139 new cases of the coronavirus. The total number of positive cases is now 3,593 including 1,357 active cases, 2,185 discharges and 51 deaths.

12.47 pm: Top American infectious diseases expert Anthony Fauci says he is confident a vaccine can be rolled out in 2021, AP reports. Fauci says he is “cautiously optimistic that we will have a vaccine by the end of this year and as we go into 2021. I don’t think it’s dreaming...I believe it’s a reality [and] will be shown to be reality.”

11.59 am: Jain says the next serological survey in Delhi will start from today, reports ANI. The process will be conducted across the Capital.

The last survey showed that 23.48% of the participants developed Immunoglobulin G antibodies that indicate they may have been infected by the coronavirus. The study also noted that a large number of those infected were asymptomatic.

11.50 am: Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain says it would “have been better” if the lieutenant governor allowed the state government to reopen hotels. The government had announced it would open them after which Anil Baijal reversed the decision on Friday. “Hotels at places bordering Delhi such as Noida, Ghaziabad and Haryana are open,” Jain says, according to ANI. “Covid-19 cases are decreasing in Delhi, however, in these places cases are increasing.”

10.51 am: Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro – known for making several insensitive remarks about the virus – says there is nothing to worry about with regard to Covid-19, and that Brazilians must just “face up to it”, reports WION.

“I knew I was going to catch it someday, as I think unfortunately nearly everyone here is going to catch it eventually,” he says. “What are you afraid of? Face up to it. I regret the deaths. But people die every day, from lots of things. That’s life.”

10.49 am: The US records 66,986 new cases of the virus, reports The Guardian. The country now has around 4.58 million cases.

10.41 am: The mayor of Pune has alleged that there are at least 400 suspected coronavirus deaths that remain unaccounted for in the city in July, PTI reports. Murlidhar Mohol says he brought it up with Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray.

“There are at least 12 deaths of suspected coronavirus patients that are going unaccounted for in Sassoon hospital daily,” PTI quotes Mohol as saying. “Similar cases are taking place in private hospitals also. These deaths remain unaccounted for because the patients are either brought dead to the hospitals or they die immediately after being brought there. As per the guidelines, no test is conducted on a deceased. But when the doctors take the X-ray of these people, they show symptoms of Covid-19.”

9.30 am: India reports 57,117 new cases in the last 24 hours, according to the Ministry of Health. The total tally now is at 16,95,988.

8.49 am: The World Health Organization says that given the potency of the virus, it is highly likely that the effects of the disease will be felt for decades. “It’s sobering to think that six months ago, when you recommended I declare a public health emergency of international concern, there were less than 100 cases and no deaths outside China,” WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says. “The pandemic is a once-in-a-century health crisis, the effects of which will be felt for decades to come.”

8.44 am: The Supreme Court has said that witnessing temple rituals through live streaming cannot be a substitute for a physical visit to places of worship, the Hindustan Times reports. The court has endorsed opening of temples, churches and mosques during the lockdown period. A three-judge bench headed by Justice Arun Mishra has said that a limited number of devotees can be permitted inside religious places of worship.

8.41 am: In Tamil Nadu, all Sundays till August 31 will see a complete lockdown, ANI reports.

8.22 am: The Mizoram government says that the total number of Covid-19 cases in the state is 412, including 247 discharged cases and 165 active cases.

8.15 am: The global coronavirus count has crossed 1.75 crore, and the number of deaths have risen to more than 6.78 lakh on Saturday morning, according to the Johns Hopkins University.

8.11 am: Here are the top updates from Friday:

  • India on Friday reported a record 55,078 new coronavirus cases, taking the overall tally to 16,38,870. The toll rose to 35,747 with 779 more deaths. More than 10.57 lakh people in India have recovered. Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan on Friday said India’s doubling rate was now 21 days and that the recovery rate was up to 64.5%.  
  • Maharashtra registered 10,320 coronavirus and 265 deaths on Friday, taking the total tally of infections in the state to 4,22,118 and the toll to 14,994. Tamil Nadu reported 5,881 new cases and 97 deaths. Delhi recorded 1,195 new coronavirus cases and 27 deaths, according to a health bulletin released by the government.
  •   The Directorate General of Civil Aviation extended the suspension of international flights in the country till August 31. While domestic flights resumed in India from May 25, the ban imposed on international flights is in place for more than four months.
  •   The Supreme Court directed the Centre to ensure that frontline health workers are paid salaries on time amid the coronavirus crisis. The Centre told the court that Maharashtra, Punjab, Tripura and Karnataka had not complied with its earlier order.
  •   The Indian government announced that coronavirus containment zones can be denotified 14 days after discharge of the last confirmed case of coronavirus, instead of the previously mandatory 28 days.