Here’s are the updates from Sunday:

  1. Tamil Nadu extended coronavirus lockdown in the state till June 28, the Hindustan Times reported. In a fresh guideline issued on Sunday, the state government allowed some relaxations in the curbs and classified the districts into three tiers based on number of active cases. Meanwhile, Uttarakhand also extended the lockdown till June 29.
  2. India registered 58,419 new Covid-19 cases and 1,576 fatalities in 24 hours, pushing the country’s overall tally to 2,98,81,965 and toll to 3,86,713. This is the lowest single-day jump in infections since March 31 when the country reported 53,480 new cases. There are 7,29,243 active cases in the country and 2,87,66,009 patients have recovered so far.  
  3. All India Institute of Medical Sciences chief Randeep Guleria said that the new “Delta plus” strain of coronavirus could become a “variant of concern”, if Covid-related guidelines are not followed properly, NDTV reported. In an interview to the news channel, he also stressed upon the need for genome sequencing of the virus to track how the new mutation was behaving. The AY.1 or B.1.617.2.1 strain has a mutation called K417N that is linked to high infectivity (ability of a pathogen to establish an infection).
  4. The West Bengal government said that it will only inoculate those in the priority groups from Monday due to shortage of vaccines, PTI reported.
  5. The Delhi government allowed bars to open from Monday with 50% seating capacity between noon and 10 pm. Public parks, gardens, golf clubs and outdoor yoga activities will also be allowed, while restaurants can now stay open from 8 am to 10 pm. The national capital reported 124 fresh Covid-19 cases in the last 24 hours, in the lowest single-day rise since February 16.
  6. About 82,500 excess deaths have occurred in Bihar between January and May at a time when the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic caused a surge in infections and deaths in India. This has cast doubts on the state’s official data on Covid-19 deaths.
  7. The Centre on Saturday told the Supreme Court that deaths of all citizens diagnosed with the coronavirus infection will be classified as Covid-19 deaths, irrespective of the comorbidities. The Ministry of Home Affairs said that exceptions can be made in the death certificates only if there is a clear alternative cause of death that cannot be attributed to the infection.
  8. The World Health Organization advised countries in the southeast Asia region to scale up and rigorously implement public health and social measures, along with efforts to accelerate vaccination for Covid-19, to prevent another surge, as more countries confirmed prevalence of highly transmissible variants of concern, The Hindu reported.
  9. The number of deaths related to Covid-19 crossed five lakh in Brazil, the second-highest in the world, BBC reported.
  10. Covid-19 has infected over 17.82 crore people across the world, according to Johns Hopkins University. More than 38 lakh people have died due to the infection.