Tag Archives: Prime Minister Narendra Modi

India, Russia strike trade, arms deals during Putin visit

By Alasdair Pal and Neha Arora

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Russia and India signed a flurry of trade and arms deals during President Vladimir Putin’s visit to New Delhi for talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday, including one that will see India produce more than 600,000 Kalashnikov assault rifles.

Putin travelled to India with Russia’s defense and foreign ministers in a visit that saw the two countries reinforce their ties with a military and technical cooperation pact until 2031 and a pledge to boost annual trade to $30 billion by 2025.

The Russian president is visiting India amid increasingly strained relations between Russia and the United States, also a key Indian ally, which has expressed reservations about the growing military cooperation between Moscow and New Delhi.

A joint statement published after the talks said Russia and India had “reiterated their intention to strengthen defense cooperation, including in the joint development of production of military equipment.”

In addition to the deal for India to produce AK-203 assault rifles, Russia said it was interested in continuing to provide S-400 air defense missile systems.

India’s Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla said the two countries had signed 28 investment pacts, including deals on steel, shipbuilding, coal and energy. He added that a 2018 contract for the S-400 missile systems was currently being implemented.

“Supplies have begun this month, and will continue to happen,” he said, referring to the S-400.

The deal with Moscow puts India at risk of sanctions from the United States under a 2017 U.S. law aimed at deterring countries from buying Russian military hardware.

Russian oil company Rosneft said it signed a contract with Indian Oil to supply up to 2 million tonnes of oil to India by the end of 2022.

The countries also signed a memorandum of understanding for Russia to send an uninterrupted supply of coal to India to support its steel production, among other deals.

Putin and Modi also discussed the situation in Afghanistan, voicing their commitment to ensure that the country will never become a safe haven for international terrorism.

(Reporting by Alasdair Pal in New Delhi and Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber in Moscow; Editing by Alex Richardson and Paul Simao)

India’s excess deaths during pandemic up to 4.9 million, study shows

By Ankur Banerjee and Neha Arora

(Reuters) -India’s excess deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic could be as high as 4.9 million, a new study shows, providing further evidence that millions more may have died from coronavirus than the official tally.

The report by the Washington-based Center for Global Development, co-authored by India’s former chief economic adviser Arvind Subramanian, included deaths from all causes since the start of the pandemic through June this year.

India’s official tally of more than 414,000 deaths is the world’s third highest after the United States and Brazil, but the study adds to growing calls from experts for a rigorous nationwide audit of fatalities.

A devastating rise in infections in April and May, driven largely by the more infectious and dangerous Delta variant, overwhelmed the healthcare system and killed at least 170,000 people in May alone, official data show.

“What is tragically clear is that too many people, in the millions rather than hundreds of thousands, may have died,” the report said, estimating between 3.4 million and 4.9 million excess deaths during the pandemic.

But it did not ascribe all excess deaths to the pandemic.

“We focus on all-cause mortality, and estimate excess mortality relative to a pre-pandemic baseline, adjusting for seasonality,” the authors said.

The health ministry did not immediately respond to a Reuters email seeking comment.

Some experts have said excess deaths are the best way to measure the real toll from COVID-19.

“For every country, it’s important to capture excess mortality – the only way to prepare the health system for future shocks and to prevent further deaths,” Soumya Swaminathan, the chief scientist of the World Health Organization, said on Twitter.

The New York Times said the most conservative estimate of deaths in India was 600,000 and the worst-case scenario several times that. The government has dismissed those figures.

Health experts blame the undercounting largely on scarce resources in the vast hinterland home to two-thirds of India’s population of nearly 1.4 billion, and also many deaths at home without being tested.

India has reported a decline in daily infections from a May peak, with Tuesday’s 30,093 new cases making up its lowest daily count in four months.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has also been criticized for a messy vaccination campaign that many say helped worsen the second wave of infections.

Just over 8% of eligible adult Indians have received both vaccine doses.

In July, the government administered fewer than 4 million daily doses on average, down from a record 9.2 million on June 21, when Modi flagged off a free campaign to inoculate all 950 million adults.

(Reporting by Ankur Banerjee in Bengaluru and Neha Arora in New Delhi; Editing by Clarence Fernandez and Giles Elgood)

Analysis-India’s vaccine inequity worsens as countryside languishes

By Krishna N. Das, Abhirup Roy and Rajendra Jadhav

NEW DELHI/SATARA, India (Reuters) – Urban Indians are getting COVID-19 shots much faster than the hundreds of millions of people living in the countryside, government data shows, reflecting rising inequity in the nation’s immunization drive.

In 114 of India’s least developed districts – collectively home to about 176 million people – authorities have administered just 23 million doses in total.

That’s the same number of doses as have been administered across nine major cities — New Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune, Thane and Nagpur — which combined have half the population.

The disparity was even stronger last month, after the government allowed private sales of vaccines for adults aged under 45 years, an offer which favored residents of cities with larger private hospital networks. For the first four weeks of May, those nine cities gave 16% more doses than the combined rural districts, data from the government’s Co-WIN vaccination portal shows.

“My friends from the city were vaccinated at private hospitals,” said Atul Pawar, a 38-year-old farmer from Satara, a rural western district of Maharashtra, India’s wealthiest state. “I am ready to pay, but doses are not available and district borders are sealed because of the lockdown.”

The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare did not respond to a request for comment.

India has administered more than 222 million doses since starting its campaign in mid-January – only China and the United States have administered more – but it has given the required two doses to less than 5% of its 950 million adults.

Rural India is home to more than two-thirds of the country’s 1.35 billion people. While urban areas account for a disproportionately large share of the confirmed COVID-19 cases, those concerned about the spread of the virus in the countryside say statistics undercount cases in villages, where testing is less comprehensive.

The health system in several regions in India collapsed in April and May as the country reported the world’s biggest jump in coronavirus infections, increasing pressure on the immunization program.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government offers vaccines to vulnerable people, healthcare workers and those aged over 45 for free. Since last month, individual states have also been expected to procure vaccines for younger adults, or to provide them commercially through the private sector.

Poorer states say this leaves their residents more vulnerable. The eastern state of Jharkhand, where nearly all districts are categorized as poor, this week urged Modi to give it free vaccines for all age groups.

In many states the doses for those under 45 are available mostly or entirely in urban areas. Some officials say this is intentional, as the infection spreads more easily in crowded cities.

“It’s because of high-positivity” in urban areas, said Bijay Kumar Mohapatra, health director of the eastern state of Odisha, explaining the state’s decision to prioritize cities.

Major international and domestic firms such as Microsoft, Pepsi, Amazon, Reliance Industries, Adani Group and Tata Motors have organized inoculations for their employees, in many cases in partnership with private hospitals. Most of these companies and the huge private hospitals that serve them are located in urban centers.

Vaccination rates in rural areas have also been depressed because of patchier internet access to use the complex online system for signing up for shots, and possibly because of greater hesitancy among villagers than among city dwellers.

“LUCRATIVE DEALS”

India’s Supreme Court criticized the government’s handling of the vaccination program this week and ordered it to provide a breakdown of shots given in rural and urban areas.

“Private hospitals are not equally spread out” across the country and “are often limited to bigger cities with large populations”, the top court said in its order dated May 31.

“As such, a larger quantity will be available in such cities, as opposed to the rural areas,” it said. Private hospitals may prefer to sell doses “for lucrative deals directly to private corporations who wish to vaccinate their employees”.

Dr. Rajib Dasgupta, head of the Centre of Social Medicine and Community Health at New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University, said the risk of inequity was that parts of India would build up immunity disproportionately.

“It can leave the rural population relatively more vulnerable.”

(Reporting by Krishna N. Das, Abhirup Roy and Rajendra Jadhav; Additional reporting by Prasanta Kumar Dutta, Jatindra Dash, Sumit Khanna, Rupam Nair; Graphics by Tanvi Mehta; Editing by Peter Graff)

India ‘on war footing’ as coronavirus infections pass 24 million

By Tanvi Mehta and Shilpa Jamkhandikar

NEW DELHI (Reuters) -Prime Minister Narendra Modi sounded the alarm over the rapid spread of COVID-19 through India’s vast countryside on Friday, as 4,000 people died from the virus for the third straight day and total infections crossed 24 million.

India is in the grip of the highly transmissible B.1.617 variant of the coronavirus, first detected there and now appearing across the globe. Modi said his government was “on a war footing” to try to contain it.

“The outbreak is reaching rural areas with great speed,” he said, addressing farmers in a virtual conference. “I want to once again warn all … those who live in villages about corona.”

Although about two-thirds of Indians live in rural towns and villages where healthcare facilities are limited, it was the first time Modi has specifically referred to the virus’s spread through the countryside since a second wave erupted in February.

“All departments of the government, all resources, our armed forces, our scientists, everyone is working day and night to counter COVID, together,” he said.

Eid festivities celebrated by India’s around 200 million Muslims to mark the end of Ramadan were generally subdued on Friday. Most states have imposed full or partial lockdowns and many mosques were either shut or following social distancing measures during prayers.

“The good thing is that everyone is following and celebrating Eid inside their homes,” Maulana Khalid Rashid, a cleric in the city of Lucknow, told ANI news agency, a partner of Reuters.

Television has broadcast images of families weeping over the dead in rural hospitals or camping in wards to tend the sick, while bodies have washed up in the Ganges as crematoriums are overwhelmed and wood for funeral pyres is in short supply.

Medical journal The Lancet said restrictions on movement along with international support measures were urgently needed to stem “an unprecedented public health crisis”.

Modi has been under pressure to impose a national lockdown, though on Thursday the president of the Public Health Foundation of India questioned whether that would be effective in India.

“We recognize … the anxieties that are displayed by international observers… but you can’t wrap all of India into one blanket,” K. Srinath Reddy told a panel discussion.

Health ministry data recorded 4,000 deaths and 343,144 new infections over the last 24 hours, below last week’s peak of 414,188. Total infections since the pandemic struck India more than a year ago crossed 24 million, with 262,317 dead. Experts say the true figures are much higher, with a lack of access to tests and treatment meaning many cases go uncounted.

Modi has faced criticism over his leadership during the pandemic, having allowed a huge Hindu gathering to take place in northern India in February and addressed political rallies in April, blamed for spreading the virus to rural areas.

FAST-SPREADING VARIANT

The fast-spreading variant first found in India has caused alarm around the globe. It has led to big outbreaks in neighboring states such as Nepal, and has also been detected far afield in Britain, the Americas and elsewhere in Asia.

Yamini Mishra, Asia-Pacific director of rights group Amnesty International, said the virus was “spreading and transcending borders at a frightening speed” and would hit the region’s most marginalized populations hardest.

The catastrophe unfolding in India and Nepal should also be a warning to other countries the region “to invest heavily in surge capacity for an emergency response,” she said.

Modi allowed all Indian adults to request vaccines from May 1. But while India is the world’s largest vaccine producer, the huge demand has left it low on stocks and vaccinations have slowed down.

As of Friday, it had fully vaccinated just over 39.4 million people, or around 2.9% of the population. The government has promised to accelerate the vaccine program dramatically in coming months.

More than 2 billion doses of vaccine are likely to be available between August and December, government adviser V.K. Paul told reporters. Those would include 750 million doses of AstraZeneca’s vaccine, which is made by Serum Institute of India, as well as 550 million of Covaxin, developed by domestic producer Bharat Biotech.

Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories Ltd said a first batch of Sputnik V vaccine imported from Russia received regulatory clearance on Thursday and the first dose was administered on Friday as part of a pilot.

(Additional reporting by Anuron Kumar Mitra and Susan Mathew in Bengaluru; Writing by Raju Gopalakrishnan and John Stonestreet; Editing by Clarence Fernandez, Simon Cameron-Moore and Peter Graff)

Exclusive-India’s most populous state to spend up to $1.36 billion on COVID shots amid shortage

By Krishna N. Das

NEW DELHI (Reuters) -India’s most populous state will spend up to $1.36 billion to buy COVID-19 shots and held early talks this week with companies such as Pfizer and the local partner of the maker of Russia’s Sputnik V, a state official said on Thursday.

The move by Uttar Pradesh, home to more people than Brazil, comes as many Indian states curtail vaccinations due to severe shortages amid a record surge in coronavirus infections, with India recording more than 4,000 deaths for a second straight day as its health system fails to cope.

Uttar Pradesh has also held pre-bid talks with Indian vaccine companies the Serum Institute of India (SII) – licensed to make the AstraZeneca and Novavax shots – Bharat Biotech and Cadila Healthcare as part of a global tender to buy 40 million doses over the next few months, state spokesman Navneet Sehgal told Reuters.

He said Johnson & Johnson could also confirm their participation in the tender by late Thursday via email. Sputnik V’s local distributor, Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories, has also held talks.

“Money is not an issue, we have a huge budget,” said Sehgal, a senior bureaucrat in the state of 240 million people. “We will spend up to 100 billion rupees ($1.36 billion).”

He said funds would have to be diverted from other areas to buy the vaccines.

Dr. Reddy’s and Bharat Biotech declined to comment. Pfizer, J&J, SII and Cadila did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Uttar Pradesh has also separately ordered 10 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine and Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin.

“WHERE IS ‘INDIA’?”

Prime Minister Narendra Modi opened vaccinations to all adults from May 1, doubling the number of people eligible to an estimated 800 million, though domestic production will stay largely flat at about 80 million a month until July.

The result is that several states now plan to launch global supply tenders individually. Reuters earlier reported that the federal government would not import vaccines itself.

“Indian states left to compete/fight with each other in international market,” Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said on Twitter.

“Where is ‘India’? Portrays such a bad image of India. India, as one country, should procure vaccines on behalf of all Indian states.”

Modi’s office and the health ministry did not respond to requests for comment.

COVID-19 immunizations in the country in the past week have hit levels last seen in mid-March when India did fewer than 2 million doses a day and vaccinations were limited to only health and front-line workers.

The country has administered nearly 179 million doses, the most after China and the United States, but has given the required two doses to only 3% of its 1.35 billion people.

Vinod Kumar Paul, a top government official leading India’s response to the pandemic, told a news briefing vaccine supplies would improve significantly from August. He said more than 2 billion locally made doses may be available between August and December.

That includes 750 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine and 200 million of Novavax, both via SII. Others include 156 million doses of Sputnik V and shots developed by Indian companies such as Biological E.

(Reporting by Krishna N. Das; Additional reporting by Aishwarya Nair, Tanvi Mehta, Shilpa Jamkhandikar, Anuron Kumar Mitra and Sumit Khanna; Editing by Nick Macfie and Catherine Evans)

WHO classifies India variant as being of global concern

GENEVA (Reuters) -The World Health Organization said on Monday that the B.1.617 variant first identified in India last year was being classified as a variant of global concern.

“We classify it as a variant of concern at a global level,” Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO technical lead on COVID-19, told a briefing. “There is some available information to suggest increased transmissibility.”

Indian coronavirus infections and deaths held close to record daily highs on Monday, increasing calls for the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to lock down the world’s second-most populous country.

The WHO has said the predominant lineage of B.1.617 was first identified in India last December, although an earlier version was spotted in October 2020.

The variant has already spread to other countries, and many nations have moved to cut or restrict movements from India.

Van Kerkhove said more information about the variant and its three lineages would be made available on Tuesday.

WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that the WHO Foundation was launching a “Together for India” appeal to raise funds to purchase oxygen, medicines and protective equipment for health workers.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay, Emma Farge, Silke Koltowitz;Editing by Alison Williams)

Gandhi warns ‘explosive’ COVID wave threatens India and the world

By Nivedita Bhattacharjee and Anuron Kumar Mitra

BENGALURU (Reuters) -India’s main opposition leader Rahul Gandhi warned on Friday that unless the deadly second COVID-19 wave sweeping the country was brought under control it would devastate India as well as threaten the rest of the world.

In a letter, Gandhi implored Prime Minister Narendra Modi to prepare for another national lockdown, accelerate a countrywide vaccination program and scientifically track the virus and its mutations.

Gandhi said the world’s second-most populous nation had a responsibility in “a globalized and interconnected world” to stop the “explosive” growth of COVID-19 within its borders.

“India is home to one out of every six human beings on the planet. The pandemic has demonstrated that our size, genetic diversity and complexity make India fertile ground for the virus to rapidly mutate, transforming itself into a more contagious and more dangerous form,” wrote Gandhi.

“Allowing the uncontrollable spread of the virus in our country will be devastating not only for our people but also for the rest of the world.”

India’s highly infectious COVID-19 variant B.1.617 has already spread to other countries, and many nations have moved to cut or restrict movements from India.

British Prime Minister Boris said on Friday the government needed to handle very carefully the emergence of new coronavirus strains in India that have since started to spread in the United Kingdom.

Meanwhile tonnes of medical equipment from abroad has starting to arrive in Delhi hospitals, in what could ease the pressure on an overburdened system.

VACCINATION RATES

In the past week, India has reported an extra 1.5 million new infections and record daily death tolls. Since the start of the pandemic, it has reported 21.49 million cases and 234,083 deaths. It currently has 3.6 million active cases.

Modi has been widely criticized for not acting sooner to suppress the second wave, after religious festivals and political rallies drew tens of thousands of people in recent weeks and became “super spreader” events.

His government – which imposed a strict lockdown in March 2020 – has also been criticized for lifting social restrictions too soon following the first wave and for delays in the country’s vaccination program.

The government has been reluctant to impose a second lockdown for fear of the damage to the economy, though many states have announced their own restrictions.

Goa, a tourism hotspot on the west coast where up to one in two people tested in recent weeks for coronavirus have been positive, on Friday announced strict curbs from Sunday, restricting timings for grocery shops, forbidding unnecessary travel and urging citizens to cancel all gatherings.

While India is the world’s biggest vaccine maker, it is also struggling to produce and distribute enough doses to stem the wave of COVID-19.

Although the country has administered at least 157 million vaccine doses, its rate of inoculation has fallen sharply in recent days.

India vaccinated 2.3 million people on Thursday, the most this month but still far short of what is required to curb the spread of the virus.

RECORD INFECTIONS

India reported another record daily rise in coronavirus cases, 414,188, on Friday, bringing total new cases for the week to 1.57 million. Deaths from COVID-19 rose by 3,915 to 234,083.

Medical experts say the real extent of COVID-19 is likely to be far higher than official tallies.

India’s healthcare system is crumbling under the weight of patients, with hospitals running out of beds and medical oxygen. Morgues and crematoriums cannot handle the number of dead and makeshift funeral pyres burn in parks and car parks.

Infections are now spreading from overcrowded cities to remote rural villages that are home to nearly 70% of the 1.3 billion population.

Although northern and western areas of India bear the brunt of the disease, the south now seems to be turning into the new epicenter.

In the southern city of Chennai, only one in a hundred oxygen-supported beds and two in a hundred beds in intensive care units (ICUs) were vacant on Thursday, from a vacancy rate of more than 20% each two weeks ago, government data showed.

In India’s tech capital Bengaluru, also in the south, only 23 of the 590 beds in ICUs were vacant.

The test-positivity rate — the percentage of people tested who are found to have the disease — in the city of 12.5 million has tripled to almost 39% as of Wednesday, from about 13% two weeks ago, data showed.

Syed Tousif Masood, a volunteer with a COVID-19 resource group in Bengaluru called the Project Smile Trust, said the group’s helpline was receiving an average 5,000 requests a day for hospital beds and oxygen, compared with 50-100 such calls just one month ago.

“The experts say we have not yet hit the peak,” he said. “If this is not the peak, then I don’t know what will happen at the real peak.”

(Reporting by Tanvi Mehta and Neha Arora in Delhi, Shilpa Jamkhandikar in Mumbai, Sudarshan Varadhan in Chennai, Sachin Ravikumar and Sethuraman in Bengaluru, Writing by Michael Perry; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan, Alex Richardson and Mark Heinrich)

India sends army to help hospitals hit by COVID-19 as countries promise aid

By Shilpa Jamkhandikar and Neha Arora

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – India ordered its armed forces on Monday to help tackle surging new coronavirus infections that are overwhelming hospitals, as countries including Britain, Germany and the United States pledged to send urgent medical aid. In a meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Chief of Defense Staff General Bipin Rawat said oxygen would be released to hospitals from armed forces reserves and retired medical military personnel would join COVID-19 health facilities.

And where possible, military medical infrastructure will be made available to civilians, a government statement said, as new coronavirus infections hit a record peak for a fifth day.

“Air, Rail, Road & Sea; Heaven & earth are being moved to overcome challenges thrown up by this wave of COVID19,” Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said on Twitter.

Modi on Sunday urged all citizens to get vaccinated and to exercise caution amid what he called a “storm” of infections, while hospitals and doctors in some northern states posted urgent notices saying they were unable to cope with the influx.

In some of the worst-hit cities, bodies were being burnt in makeshift facilities offering mass cremations.

The southern state of Karnataka, home to the tech city of Bengaluru, ordered a 14-day lockdown from Tuesday, joining the western industrial state of Maharashtra, where lockdowns run until May 1, although some states were also set to lift lockdown measures this week.

The patchy curbs, complicated by local elections and mass festival gatherings, could prompt breakouts elsewhere, as infections rose by 352,991 in the last 24 hours, with crowded hospitals running out of oxygen supplies and beds.

“Currently the hospital is in beg-and-borrow mode and it is an extreme crisis situation,” said a spokesman for the Sir Ganga Ram Hospital in the capital, New Delhi.

FIRE

Following a fire at a hospital in the western diamond industry hub of Surat, five COVID-19 patients died after being moved to other hospitals that lacked space in their intensive care units, a municipal official told Reuters.

Television channel NDTV broadcast images of three health workers in the eastern state of Bihar pulling a body along the ground on its way to cremation, as stretchers ran short.

“If you’ve never been to a cremation, the smell of death never leaves you,” Vipin Narang, a political science professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United States, said on Twitter.

“My heart breaks for all my friends and family in Delhi and India going through this hell.”

On Sunday, President Joe Biden said the United States would send raw materials for vaccines, medical equipment and protective gear. Germany joined a growing list of countries pledging supplies.

In Moscow, which expects 50 million doses of its Sputnik V vaccine to be made each month in India this summer, a Kremlin spokesman expressed concern over the situation.

India, with a population of 1.3 billion, has an official tally of 17.31 million infections and 195,123 deaths, after 2,812 deaths overnight, health ministry data showed, although health experts say the figures probably run higher.

The surge in infections hit oil prices amid worries about a fall in fuel demand in the world’s third-biggest oil importer.

RALLY BACKLASH

Several cities have ordered curfews, while police enforce social distancing and mask-wearing. Politicians, especially Modi, have faced criticism for holding rallies during state election campaigns that draw thousands into packed stadiums.

About 8.6 million voters were expected to cast ballots on Monday in the eastern state of West Bengal, in the final phases of a contest set to wrap up this week. Also voting in local elections was the most populous state of Uttar Pradesh, which has been reporting an average of 30,000 infections a day.

Modi’s plea on vaccinations came after inoculations peaked at 4.5 million doses on April 5, but have since averaged about 2.7 million a day, government figures show.

Virologists said more infectious variants of the virus, including an Indian one, have fueled the resurgence.

The government told people to stay indoors and follow hygiene protocols. “Please don’t invite people into your home… It has become clearer that the transmissibility of this virus is faster,” said senior health official Vinod Kumar Paul.

Vaccine demand has outpaced supply as the inoculation campaign widened this month, while companies struggle to boost output, partly because of a shortage of raw material and a fire at a facility making the AstraZeneca dose.

However, the federal government will not import vaccines itself but expects states and companies to do so instead, in a step aimed at backing domestic manufacturers, two government officials told Reuters. [L4N2MF3ZM]

Neighboring Bangladesh sealed its border with India for 14 days, its foreign ministry said, though trade will continue. Air travel has been suspended since Bangladesh imposed a lockdown on April 14 to combat record infections and deaths.

(Reporting by Shilpa Jamkhandikar and Neha Arora; Additional reporting by Sumit Khanna, Krishna Das, Anuron Kumar Mitra, Chandini Monnappa in Bengaluru, Rajendra Jadhav in Satara, Ruma Paul in Dhaka and Dmitry Antonov in Moscow; Writing by Clarence Fernandez and William Maclean; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore and Gareth Jones)

What you need to know about the coronavirus right now

(Reuters) – Here’s what you need to know about the coronavirus right now:

Global records

India reported 78,512 new novel coronavirus infections on Monday, slightly fewer than its record set the previous day when it posted the biggest, single-day tally of infections of any country in the pandemic. On Sunday, India’s total of 78,761 new cases exceeded the previous record of 77,299 in the United States on July 16, a Reuters tally of official data showed.

Despite the surging case numbers, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been pushing for a return to normalcy to lessen the economic pain of the pandemic, having earlier imposed strict lockdowns of the country’s 1.3 billion people.

U.S. cases of the novel coronavirus surpassed 6 million on Sunday as many states in the Midwest reported increasing infections, according to a Reuters tally. While the United States has the most recorded infections in the world, it ranks tenth based on cases per capita.

More than eight months into the pandemic, the United States continues to struggle with testing. The number of people tested has fallen in recent weeks. Public health officials believe the United States needs to test more frequently to find asymptomatic coronavirus carriers to slow the spread of the COVID-19 disease.

Mutation found in Indonesia

A more infectious mutation of the new coronavirus has been found in Indonesia, the Jakarta-based Eijkman Institute for Molecular Biology said on Sunday, as the Southeast Asian country’s caseload surges.

The “infectious but milder” D614G mutation of the virus has been found in genome sequencing data from samples collected by the institute, deputy director Herawati Sudoyo told Reuters, adding that more study is required to determine whether that was behind the recent rise in cases.

The strain, which the World Health Organization said was identified in February and has been circulating in Europe and the Americas, has also been found in neighboring Singapore and Malaysia.

Vaccine approval and use underway in China

Sinovac Biotech Ltd’s coronavirus vaccine candidate CoronaVac was approved for emergency use as part of a program in China to vaccinate high-risk groups such as medical staff, a person familiar with the matter said.

China National Biotec Group (CNBG), a unit of state-owned pharmaceutical giant China National Pharmaceutical Group (Sinopharm), also said it had obtained emergency use approval for a coronavirus vaccine candidate in social media platform WeChat last Sunday. CNBG, which has two vaccine candidates in phase 3 clinical trials, did not say which of its vaccines had been cleared for emergency use.

China has been giving experimental coronavirus vaccines to high-risk groups since July, though officially it has given little details on which vaccine candidates have been given to high-risk people under the emergency use program and how many people have been vaccinated.

Lighter traffic in Seoul; masks on in Auckland

Private tuition centers shut for the first time and traffic was lighter in South Korea’s capital on Monday, the first working day of tighter social-distancing rules designed to halt a second wave of coronavirus outbreaks.

The decision came after earlier restrictions on movement failed to prevent a second wave of coronavirus infections from erupting at churches, offices, nursing homes and medical facilities.

Meanwhile in Auckland, schools and businesses reopened on Monday after the lifting of a lockdown in New Zealand’s largest city to contain the resurgence of the coronavirus, but face masks were made mandatory on public transport across the country. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said she was confident the new measure would be taken up across New Zealand, adding that “a bit of smiling with the eyes behind the mask” and kindness to Aucklanders in particular, would help get the country through the latest outbreak.

(Compiled by Karishma Singh; Editing by Jacqueline Wong)

Protests erupt as India pushes for religion-based citizenship bill

Protests erupt as India pushes for religion-based citizenship bill
By Zarir Hussain and Abhirup Roy

GUWAHATI/MUMBAI (Reuters) – Hundreds of protesters took to the streets in India on Monday as Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government offered a controversial bill in parliament that would give citizenship to non-Muslim minorities from three neighboring countries.

Home Minister Amit Shah introduced the Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB) in India’s lower house amid raucous debate. Opposition parties stood against the proposed law that would, for the first time, create a legal pathway to grant Indian nationality on the basis of religion.

The bill was originally introduced in 2016 during the Modi government’s first term but lapsed after protests and an alliance partner’s withdrawal. It proposes to grant Indian citizenship to non-Muslims who came to India from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan before 2015.

Oppositions politicians inside parliament, and protesters in several Indian cities, said the bill discriminated against Muslims and violated India’s secular constitution.

Shah and Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, which had included the CAB as part of its manifesto in the last general election, insist that it is necessary.

“In these three countries, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Jains, Parsis and Christians, followers of these six religions have been tormented,” Shah said, before the bill was tabled after a vote.

‘LAST DROP OF BLOOD’

But protesters returned to the streets in Assam – one of India’s remote northeastern states that had previously opposed the bill – and blocked roads, burnt tyres and painted walls with slogans against the new proposal.

Student groups called for dawn-to-dusk shutdown in four districts of the state. Shops, businesses, educational and financial institutions remained shut and public transport stayed off the roads.

“We will fight and oppose the bill till the last drop of our blood,” All Assam Students’ Union adviser Samujjal Bhattacharya told Reuters, underlining the region’s resistance against migrants amid fears that tens of thousands of settlers from neighboring Bangladesh would gain citizenship.

In Modi’s home state of Gujarat and the eastern city of Kolkata, hundreds of people staged protests and marched against the proposed law.

In a statement issued on Monday, a group of more than 1,000 Indian scientists and scholars also called for the immediate withdrawal of the bill.

“We fear, in particular, that the careful exclusion of Muslims from the ambit of the bill will greatly strain the pluralistic fabric of the country,” the statement said.

After going through the lower house of parliament, where BJP has a majority, the bill has to be passed by the upper house, where the ruling party enough votes. Any bill needs to be ratified by both houses of India’s parliament to become law.

“Please save this country from this law and save the home minister,” Asaduddin Owaisi, an opposition MP from the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen party, told parliament.

(Reporting by Zarir Hussain in Guwahati and Abhirup Roy in Mumbain; additional reporting by Rupak De Chowdhuri in Kolkata and Sumit Khanna in Ahmedabad; editing by Devjyot Ghoshal, Larry King)