India’s Coronavirus Infections Rise To 6.63 Million

FILE PHOTO: Health workers pull a stretcher with the body of a woman, who died due to the coronavirus disease, at a crematorium in New Delhi on October 3, 2020

India’s coronavirus case tally rose by 74,442 in the last 24 hours to 6.63 million on Monday morning, data from the Health Ministry showed.

Deaths from coronavirus infections rose by 903 to 102,685, the Ministry said.

India’s death toll from the novel coronavirus rose past 100,000 on Saturday, only the third country in the world to reach that bleak milestone, after the United States and Brazil, and its epidemic shows no sign of abating.

Last week, India further eased restrictions and permitted states to open schools and movie theatres.

Meanwhile, world stock markets neared a more than two-week high on Tuesday after U.S. President Donald Trump’s return to the White House from hospital, and expectations of a new U.S. stimulus package being agreed rose.

Five hundred of the world’s leading charities and social groups have sent a letter to the International Monetary Fund warning that its support programmes, which have had to be ramped up to cope with COVID-19, were condemning many countries to years of austerity.

A second wave of the pandemic risks delaying the euro zone’s economic recovery, European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde said.

Meanwhile, China is in talks to have its locally-produced COVID-19 vaccines assessed by the World Health Organization, as a step toward making them available for international use, a WHO official said.