NEW DELHI (AP) – India reported a record-breaking increase in new coronavirus cases for the second time in four days on Wednesday, while New Delhi, Mumbai and dozens of other cities announced their commitment to slow the rising infections.
The increase of 115,736 cases of coronavirus reported in the last 24 hours is above the 103,844 infections reported on Sunday. The death toll has risen by 630 in the past 24 hours, the highest since November, bringing the total death toll in the country to 166,177 since the pandemic began.
The federal government has so far refused to draft a nationwide exclusion to contain the latest boom, but has asked the countries to decide on the imposition of local restrictions.
“The pandemic is not over and there is no room for complacency,” Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said on Twitter. He urged people to be vaccinated.
India now has a seven-day moving average of more than 78,000 cases per day and has reported 12.8 million virus cases since the onset of the pandemic, the highest to the United States and Brazil.
While 85 million Indians received at least one coronavirus vaccine shot, only 11 million of them received both.
Due to an increase in infections, India has now slowed down the export of large quantities of vaccines. It has so far sent 64.5 million doses.
Experts believe that the upswing, which is worse than last year’s peak in mid-September, is partly due to increasing disregard for social distance and the wearing of masks in public spaces.
As health officials continue to warn about rallies in public places, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his party leaders are still holding giant rallies in several states where local elections are taking place.
While on the campaign in the West Bengal state on Tuesday, he saw him waving out of his car at maskless supporters.
His government also allowed a huge Hindu festival that draws tens of thousands of devotees daily on the banks of the Ganges River in the northern state of Uttarakhand.
In other developments in the Asia-Pacific region:
North Korea has continued to claim a perfect record for keeping the coronavirus out in its latest report to the World Health Organization. At the outset of the pandemic, North Korea described its efforts to eradicate the virus as a ‘matter of national existence’. It closed its borders, banned tourists and ousted diplomats. The country continues to restrict cross-border traffic and has quarantined tens of thousands of people who showed symptoms. But it still says it has found no case of COVID-19, a claim that is widely doubted. Edwin Salvador, representative of the WHO in North Korea, said in an email to The Associated Press on Wednesday that from the beginning of the pandemic until April 1, the North tested 23,211 people for the coronavirus and that all results were negative. wash. Salvador said the North said 732 people were tested between March 26 and April 1. WHO officials say the North no longer provides the number of people it has quarantined to the UN agency.
South Korea has reported 668 new cases of the coronavirus, the highest daily jump in nearly three months, as concerns about a new surge and a slow explosion of the vaccine grow. The numbers released Wednesday by the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency brought the national case to 106,898, including 1,756 deaths. Most new business was in the Seoul area and other major cities. Officials had earlier insisted that a wait-and-see approach was feasible for the implementation of South Korea because the outbreak of the country was not as dire as that in America and Europe. Now they say they are considering all possible measures to prevent a shortage, and it remains to be seen whether they are considering restricting the export of AstraZeneca shots manufactured by local firm SK Bioscience.
Scott Morrison, the Prime Minister of Australia, has criticized the rollout of the vaccine behind the schedule, noting that his country is having trouble getting promised vaccine doses from Europe. He said more than 3 million of the AstraZeneca vaccine doses in Australia had not yet arrived, but that should not be accepted because he criticized the European Union. “It’s just a simple fact. This is not a dispute. This is not a conflict. This is not an argument. This is not a collision. This is just a simple fact. “I am simply explaining to the Australian public that there are issues that are limiting and that have particularly limited the overall deployment of the vaccine in recent months,” Morrison told reporters in Canberra. He said he would write to the European Union and AstraZeneca again, asking them to send the full dose of vaccine doses. According to Morrison, some doses will be sent to help his neighbor Papua New Guinea break out of the virus. In March, Europe stopped about 250,000 vaccines that would go to Australia due to concerns about European supply shortages.
Nepal resumed on Wednesday to hand out vaccines against COVID-19 with vaccines donated by China. The Himalayan nation began its vaccination campaign in January with AstraZeneca vaccines manufactured by the Serum Institute in India, but had to suspend it after India reduced supply. China donated 800,000 doses of the Sinopharm vaccine that was flown last month. India donated 1 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine for the first time, and Nepal bought another 2 million from the company. Only 1 million was provided and the delivery of the other half was delayed by the company.