1. India’s coronavirus count rose to 50,20,359 on Wednesday with 90,123 new cases. The toll jumped by 1,290 to 82,066. As many as 39,42,360 people have recovered from the infection, taking the recovery rate to 78.53%. There are 9,95,933 active cases. The mortality rate, meanwhile, is 1.63%.
  2. Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, the Russian Direct Investment Fund or RDIF, and global pharmaceutical company Dr Reddy’s Laboratories have agreed to collaborate on clinical trials and distribution of the Sputnik V vaccine in India, they said in a joint statement.
  3. Delhi reported a record 4,473 new cases, taking its tally to 2,30,269. The Capital’s toll rose by 33 to 4,839. Maharashtra, on the other hand, recorded 23,365 new cases, pushing the tally to 11,21,221. The state’s toll rose by 474 to 30,883.
  4. Union minister Nitin Gadkari tested positive for the coronavirus on Wednesday. The minister said in a tweet that he was in self-isolation and doing well.
  5. The Congress criticised the Centre for its handling of the coronavirus crisis and asked if the government would “blame God to evade accountability” on the pandemic. Meanwhile, Trinamool Congress leader Derek O’Brien said that the PM CARES Fund, set up in March in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic by the prime minister’s office, was the most “opaque dark fund” in the world and referred to it as the “PM couldn’t-care-less” fund.
  6. Reserve Bank of India Governor Shaktikanta Das said that India’s economic recovery is likely to be gradual, as the country is still recovering from the coronavirus pandemic. Das was addressing the National Executive Committee meeting of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, or FICCI.    
  7. Andhra Pradesh Lok Sabha MP Balli Durga Prasad Rao died of the coronavirus. He was 64 years old.
  8. The Kerala government has allowed migrant workers, who are Covid-19 positive but asymptomatic, to continue working in the state, The News Minute reported on Wednesday. The order, issued by Additional Chief Secretary of Labour Department Satyajeet Rajan, stated that such asymptomatic migrant labourers can work in “areas exclusively marked” for them.
  9. The Centre informed the Rajya Sabha that more than 30 vaccine candidates for coronavirus have been supported, and three of them are in advance stages of trials, while four are in advanced preclinical development stage.
  10. Globally, the coronavirus has infected more than 2.96 crore people and killed 9,36,156 people, according to the Johns Hopkins University. The number of worldwide recoveries has crossed 2 crore.