Coronavirus pandemic: India crosses China’s official infections tally; government unveils plan for third tranche of Covid-19 booster package 

New Delhi: The number of the novel coronavirus, Covid-19, infections in the country crossed the official number of infections announced by China, where the virus originated last November. The total number of Covid-19 infections in India is now over 85,500 whereas China’s official number is 82,933. The death toll in India is now 2,753, which is still below China’s official death toll of 4,633.

India saw 3,787 Covid-19 cases and 104 deaths, on Friday. The three states which reported the highest number of new cases are Maharashtra, 1,576; Tamil Nadu, 385; and Gujarat, 340.

Maharashtra has the most number of Covid-19 cases with 27,524 cases. Mumbai alone has over 16,500 cases.

Govt unveils plans for third tranche of stimulus package 

The finance minister, Nirmala Sitharaman, for the third day running held a news briefing to announce a part of the plan for boosting the economy and the people hit by the coronavirus pandemic.

On Friday, unveiling the third tranche of the ₹20 lakh crore stimulus package termed as “Atmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan” (self-reliant India campaign), Sitharaman announced a ₹1 lakh crore agriculture infrastructure fund and a ₹10,000 crore scheme for the formalization of micro food enterprises.

The finance minister also said the government will bring in a law with the aim to reform the agriculture market, which will seek to provide adequate choices to farmers to sell their produce at an attractive price by removing interstate trade barriers and bringing in e-trading of agriculture produce. She also said an amendment of the stringent Essential Commodities Act is also on the anvil, which will seek to remove foodgrains, edible oil, oilseeds, pulses, onions and potato from its purview.

The finance minister also made big announcements for the fisheries sector. She announced an allocation of ₹20,000 crore through Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana. Out of this ₹11,000 crore would be for marine and inland fishing and aquaculture. The remaining ₹9,000 crore would be for fishing harbours, cold chains and markets.

Full video of Nirmala Sitharaman’s media briefing on Atmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan package:

India, Peru overtake China in Covid-19 infections, global deaths top 300,000

The new coronavirus, Covid-19, which saw its first outbreak in China starting November 2019, now has spread to almost every country on the planet infecting over 4.6 million people and causing over 300,000 deaths. On Friday, along with India, Peru too overtook China’s official figure in the number of coronavirus infections. The South American country now has 84,495 cases and 2,392 deaths.

Peru is the third most affected country in the Americas after the United States and Brazil. The United States is leading all other countries in the world both in the number of Covid-19 infections and deaths due to it by a long margin at this moment.

Latest global coronavirus stats from Johns Hopkins Center for Systems Science and Engineering

Latest coronavirus India stats:

• Confirmed: 85,784
• Deaths: 2,753
• Recovered: 30,234

Latest worldwide coronavirus stats:

• Confirmed: 4,609,787
• Deaths: 307,532
• Recovered: 1,742,813

Top 5 countries with coronavirus infections:

• United States: 1,480,701
• Spain: 274,367
• Russia: 262,843
• United Kingdom: 236,711
• Italy: 223,885

Top 5 countries with coronavirus deaths are:

• United States: 88,308
• United Kingdom: 33,998
• Italy: 31,610
• Spain: 27,459
• France: 27,529

[Source: Worldometer]

_{[This story was last updated at 4.14am on May 16, 2020.]}

Related