Here are the top updates on Saturday:

  1. NITI Aayog member Dr VK Paul said children were getting infected with the coronavirus but experiencing mild symptoms. “They are largely asymptomatic,” Paul said, according to NDTV. “However, the task is to make sure that they do not become part of the chain through which the disease spreads among people.”
  2. India registered 2,57,299 new coronavirus cases and 4,194 deaths in the last 24 hours. With this, the country’s tally rose to 2,62,89,290 while the toll climbed to 2,95,525 since the pandemic broke out in January 2020.
  3. The Centre urged health professionals to stop the irrational use of steroids for treating coronavirus patients, and said that it was contributing to the increase in cases of mucormycosis. There are 8,848 cases of mucormycosis or “black fungus” across the country, said Union minister Sadananda Gowda. The rare fungal infection has sprung up in patients recovering from the coronavirus.
  4. A new study by the United Kingdom has found that two vaccine doses offer strong protection against the variant of the coronavirus first detected in India, the Financial Times reported. The UK government’s data showed that two doses offered 81% protection against the B.1.617.2 variant, while a single dose offered only 33%, the newspaper reported, quoting two unidentified officials who attended a meeting where these figures were presented.
  5. India will begin producing the Russian-made coronavirus vaccine Sputnik V in August, DB Venkatesh Varma, India’s ambassador to Russia, said.
  6. Passengers flying out of India will now need to furnish a negative RT-PCR report with a QR code on it. The guidelines were issued by the Ministry of Civil Aviation last week.The step has been taken to ensure that the RT-PCR test report is genuine after there were incidents of flyers producing fake or edited reports. It will also ensure minimum physical contact.
  7. Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said vaccination for the 18-44 category has been halted in the national Capital from today. Meanwhile, Delhi reported 2,260 new coronavirus cases and 182 fatalities in a day. As many as 63,155 tests were conducted. The positivity rate dropped to 3.58%. This was the lowest one-day rise in cases in the Capital since March 31.
  8. The Tamil Nadu and Jammu and Kashmir governments on Saturday extended the coronavirus-induced lockdown for another week from May 24.
  9. Chhattisgarh is now issuing vaccination certificates with Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel’s photo, the Hindustan Times reported. Health Minister TS Singh Deo said that there should be no objection to Baghel’s photo on the certificates since the state government was funding vaccination for the 18-44 age group.
  10. Globally, the coronavirus has now infected over 16.62 crore people and killed over 34.45 lakh since the pandemic broke out in December 2019, according to Johns Hopkins University.