Read the top updates of the day here:

9.24 pm: Karnataka reports 38,603 new cases and 476 deaths in the last 24 hours, according to government data.

9.23 pm: West Bengal reports 19,003 new cases and 147 deaths, according to government data.

9.22 pm: Maharashtra reports 26,616 new cases and 516 deaths in last 24 deaths, shows government data.

7.03 pm: Bharatiya Janata Party MLA from Uttar Pradesh’s Sitapur Rakesh Rathore expresses resentment on management of Covid-19 crisis in the state.

“What standing do MLAs have?” he says in a video that surfaced on Monday. “If we speak too much, treason and sedition charges will be slapped on us as well.”

Rathore made the comment last week, while speaking to reporters.

6.59 pm: The Gujarat High Court directs the state government to present a roadmap on how it intends to proceed if the number of “black fungus” infection cases rise, reports PTI.

6.57 pm: Odisha records 10,757 new cases of coronavirus and 22 deaths in the last 24 hours, reports PTI.

6.56 pm: Jaipur unit of the World Health Organization donates 100 oxygen concentrators to the Rajasthan government, reports PTI.

6.55 pm: Puducherry Chief Minister N Rangasamy returns home after getting discharged from a hospital in Chennai where he was under treatment for Covid-19, reports PTI.

6.53 pm: Delhi has less than a day’s stock of Covaxin shots for those above, while Covishield stock will last for five days, PTI reports, quoting Aam Aadmi Party MLA Atishi.

6.44 pm: A Delhi Court remands businessman Navneet Kalra to three-day police custody in connection with a case relating to the alleged hoarding of oxygen concentrators in a restaurant owned by him in south Delhi, reports ANI.

6.42 pm: Prime Minister Narendra Modi interacts with doctors from across the country on their learnings and suggestions regarding Covid-19, reports ANI.

5.40 pm: The BKC Vaccination centre in Mumbai suffers damage due to Cyclone Tauktae, reports India Today.

5.18 pm: Delhi reports 4,524 cases with a positivity rate of 8.42% in the last 24 hours, according to government data. The toll rises to 21,846 with 340 deaths.

3.32 pm: A government panel on adverse effects of vaccination says bleeding and clotting cases in India are minuscule and in line with the expected number of diagnoses of these conditions in the country.

3.26 pm: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi takes a jibe at Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

“There’s a lot common between PM Cares ventilator and the PM himself,” he tweets. “Too much false PR [public relations], don’t do their respective jobs, nowhere in sight when needed!”

3.20 pm: Active coronavirus cases in India decrease by over one lakh in the last 24 hours to 35,16,997, says the Union health ministry.

The ten states of Karnataka, Maharashtra, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Gujarat and Chhattisgarh cumulatively account for 75.04% of the total active cases.

3.17 pm: The Shakti Bhatt Foundation decides to make a donation towards coronavirus relief, instead of awarding a literary award this year. The organisation will be donating Rs 1 lakh each to Haryana-based Hemkunt Foundation, nine-year old climate activist from Manipur Licypriya Kangujam, and Youth Congress chief Srinivas BV.

3.12 pm: The Delhi Police seek five-day custody of Navneet Kalra, accused in the oxygen cylinders hoarding case, from a court in Saket.

3.12 pm: Tamil Nadu government forms a 13-member Legislators’ Advisory Committee, headed by Chief Minister MK Stalin, to combat Covid-19, reports ANI.

3.10 pm: Actor Rajinikanth donates Rs 50 lakh for Covid-19 relief fund to Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin, reports ANI.

3.09 pm: Centre has so far provided 52.64 lakh remedesivir vials, 45,066 ventilators, nearly 1.77 crore PPE kits and over 4.22 crore N95 masks to states, ANI reports quoting Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan.

3.05 pm: Uttarakhand joins list of states to have floated a global tender for procurement of Covid-19 vaccines, reports The Indian Express. The bid has been initiated to vaccinate 30 lakh individuals in the state.

3.02 pm: Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline’s potential coronavirus vaccine shows strong immune responses in all adult age groups, according to results of the phase 2 trial released on Monday.

3 pm: Singapore will close schools from Wednesday as authorities warn new coronavirus strains like the one first detected in India, were affecting more children in the city-state, reports AFP.

2.59 pm: Union women and child development ministry lays out procedure for rehabilitation of children who lost their parents to Covid-19, reports PTI. The ministry says that such children are to be produced before the District Child Welfare Committee within 24 hours.

2.11 pm: Janata Dal (Secular) leader HD Kumaraswamy tells the Karnataka government that the lockdown, if extended, should be “pro bono” where economic and food relief is provided to residents who need it, reports PTI.

2.02 pm: Andhra Pradesh extends curfew till May 31, reports ANI.

1.58 pm: Actor Rajinikanth gives over Rs 50 lakhs for coronavirus relief fund to Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin at the state secretariat, reports ANI. “I appealed to the people to strictly follow Covid restriction favoured by the government to control the pandemic,” says Rajinikanth.

12.30 pm: Senior Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad writes to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan, asking them to ensure that Covaxin maker Bharat Biotech shares the technology with the WHO-approved pharmaceutical companies in India so that Cvid-19 vaccine production can be augmented, reports The Hindu.

12.25 pm: World Health Organization Chief Scientist Dr Soumya Swaminathan has said the efforts put in by authorities in the next six to 18 months will be most critical in battling the Covid-19 crisis, reports The Hindu.

12.20 pm: With states adding more beneficiaries for vaccines as part of the “frontline workers” category, the Union home ministry has said the state governments will have to procure those doses directly from manufacturers, reports The Indian Express.

12 pm: Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Adityanath claims that the state is prepared to tackle the third wave of the coronavirus pandemic “as and when it comes”.

Read here:

Coronavirus: UP prepared to face third wave, says Chief Minister Adityanath

11.55 am: As many as 60,000 doses of the second batch of Russia’s coronavirus vaccine, Sputnik V, arrived at the Rajiv Gandhi International Airport in Delhi, says drug firm Dr Reddy’s Laboratories.

11.39 am: India’s Sunday’s record of 2,81,386 coronavirus cases is the first time since April 21 when the daily cases in the country dropped below the 3-lakh mark, according to NDTV.

11.34 am: The Delhi Police tells Delhi High Court that the India Youth Congress chief Srinivas BV, Bharatiya Janata Party MP Gautam Gambhir and others were actually helping people in getting medical aid in the form of medicine, oxygen, plasma or hospital bed, reports The Indian Express. The police were conducting an investigation against politicians on a plea alleging that they were black-marketing and illegally distributing .Covid-19 medicines.

11.32 am: The National Health Authority has introduced restrictions to access of CoWIN portal’s vaccination slot availability information by third parties, reports The Indian Express. Now, for third-party entities sourcing slot availability information from CoWIN’s database, such data will be made available with a delay of up to 30 minutes. The portal has also been limited to be accessed from an Indian IP address.

11.29 am: Trinamool Congress leader and former Union minister Yashwant Sinha tweets a video, saying it has exposed the Narendra Modi government. “India’s representative at the United Nations informed the United Nations that India sent more vaccines abroad than has vaccinated its own people,” he says.

11.24 am: The Centre directs Uttar Pradesh and Bihar governments to prevent dumping of bodies in Ganga and its tributaries, reports PTI. The central government also asks the states to focus on the safe disposal of the bodies and a dignified cremation for them, after corpses were seen floating in the rivers last week.

11.18 am: Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan says that the Covid-19 drug, 2DG, might be India’s first indigenous research-based outcome to fight the infection, reports ANI. “It will reduce recovery time and oxygen dependency,” he adds.

11 am: Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh release Covid drug 2DG, which was developed by the Defence Research and Development Organisation, reports ANI.

9.28 am: India records 2,81,386 new cases on Monday, taking the total count of infections to 2,49,65,463 since the pandemic broke out in January 2020. The country’s toll rises by 4,106 to 2,74,390.

Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.

9.21 am: Long working hours are killing hundreds of thousands of people in a year and this trend may quicken because of the coronavirus crisis, the World Health Organization says.

The study, published in the journal Environment International, showed that 7,45,000 people died from ischemic heart disease and stroke linked to long working hours (55 hours or more per week) in 2016.

9.16 am: The Kedarnath Temple in Uttarakhand opens for devotees.

9.12 am: The Delhi Police arrest businessman Navneet Kalra, who is accused of hoarding and black marketing oxygen concentrators.

Read more: Delhi Police arrest businessman Navneet Kalra in oxygen concentrator hoarding case

9.06 am: The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation on Sunday shifted patients from Covid centres to government hospitals amid Cyclone Tauktae warning, The Indian Express reports.

More than 600 patients were shifted from three jumbo facilities till late Sunday evening.

8.48 am: Visuals from Sardar Patel Covid-19 Care Centre in Delhi.

8.46 am: The police say two persons were held for black marketing of oxy flow meters at Jodhpur’s Mathuradas Mathur Hospital, reports ANI.

8.44 am: Uttarakhand Health Secretary Amit Negi says that cases will be registered against hospital superintendents if death figures of coronavirus patients, who were treated at a Covid-19 hospital, are not provided to the state control room on the same day or if the data of the same is concealed, reports ANI.

8.28 am: The Telangana government announces suspending its coronavirus vaccine drive for individuals above 45 years of age who want to the second shot, reports News18. In an order, the government said there was not enough Covaxin shots and that the state government has not received fresh stock from the Union health ministry.

8.26 am: Virologist Shahid Jameel resigns as the chief of the Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium, a scientific advisory group that coordinates the country’s genome sequencing work. He has, however, not given a reason behind his resignation.

Read more here: Coronavirus: Virologist Shahid Jameel resigns as chief of genome sequencing group

Here are the top updates from Sunday

  • India on Sunday registered 3,11,170 new coronavirus cases, pushing the country’s tally of infections since the pandemic began in January 2020 to 2,46,84,077. The toll rose by 4,077 to 2,70,284. 
  • Mumbai Mayor Kishori Pednekar said that coronavirus vaccination is likely to be suspended in the city on Monday due to Cyclone Tauktae. It will resume from Tuesday. In Gujarat, vaccinations will be on hold till Tuesday.
  • The Centre issued new coronavirus-related guidelines for peri-urban, rural and tribal areas, taking note of the “gradual ingress” of the infection in these regions.
  • The Centre said that more than 1.84 crore doses of coronavirus vaccines were available with states and they will receive nearly 51 lakh more over the next three days. Meanwhile, the CoWIN portal used for online registration of coronavirus vaccines has been reconfigured to reflect the extension of interval for two doses of Covishield to 12-16 weeks, the Centre said on Sunday. It, however, added that the online appointments already booked for the second dose of Covishield will remain valid.
  • Bharat Biotech announced that its coronavirus vaccine Covaxin is effective against the mutant strains of the virus, including the ones first detected in the United Kingdom and India.