President Trump wants China to pay for Covid-19 mischief; India sees highest daily deaths

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President Donald Trump. (Photo courtesy: Al Jazeera)

(TibetanReview.net, Apr28’20) – With the United States being faced with the grim prospect of its Covid-19 cases touching the one million mark while more than 56,000 have succumbed to it, President Donald Trump wants China to pay for having hidden information about the outbreak and misled the world about its deadliness. The country has suffered the most number of infections and deaths across the world. India has moved up as the country with the 15th most number of infections, going past Switzerland.

“We’re doing very serious investigations … We are not happy with China,” Trump was quoted as saying Apr 27 at a White House news conference. “We believe it could have been stopped at the source. It could have been stopped quickly and it wouldn’t have spread all over the world.”

Trump had previously praised China for its efforts at containing the pandemic and its spread while downplaying its dangers to the US.

Over the past 24 hours as of Apr 28 at 2:01:20 PM (GMT-4) a total of 70,255 people were infected and 4,686 died across 185 countries, taking the cumulative global totals to 3,050,308 cases and 211,326 deaths, according to the Dashboard maintained by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University.

The countries with the most number of infections thus far are US (988,469), Spain (229,422), Italy (199,414), France (165,977), Germany (158,758), UK (158,348), Turkey (112,261), Russia (93,558), Iran (Iran), and China (83,938). India’s tally on the Johns Hopkins dashboard stands at 29,451 cases.

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For India, it was another day of high increases in cases and deaths, with the latter being the highest daily increase thus far.

India, the country with the 15th most number of infections, reported 1543 new infections and 62 new deaths in the past 24 hours as of Apr 28 at 8AM (GMT+5:30), according to the tally of the country’s Ministry of Health. The total number of infections in the country stood at 29,435 and the deaths 934. A total of 6869 had recovered, leaving a total of 21,632 cases active.

Maharashtra, the worst hit state by a huge margin, had a total of 8590 (+522) cases, followed by Gujarat with 3548 (+247) cases, Delhi with 3108 (+190) cases, Rajasthan with 2262 (+77) cases, Madhya Pradesh with 2168 (+72) infections, Uttar Pradesh with 1955 (+87 cases, Tamil Nadu with 1937 (+52) infections, Andhra Pradesh with 1183 (+86) cases, Telangana with 1004 (+2) cases, West Bengal with 697 (+48) cases, Jammu & Kashmir with 546 (+23) cases, Karnataka with 512 (+9) cases, Kerala with 481 (+23) cases, Bihar with 345 (+71) cases, Punjab with 313 (+0) cases, Haryana with 296 (+7) cases, and Odisha, 118 (+15).

Other badly hit states/Union Territories were Jharkhand, 82 (+0),Uttarakhand, 51 (+1); Chandigarh, 40 (+10); Himachal Pradesh, 40 (+0); Chattisgarh, 37 (+0), Assam, 36 (+0); Andaman and Nicobar Islands, 33 (+0); Ladakh, 20 (+0); and Meghalaya 12 (+0).

Besides, Puducherry (8), Goa (7), Manipur (2), Tripura (2), Mizoram (1), and Arunachal Pradesh (1) and had reported cases. One case in Nagaland was transferred to Assam.

Maharashtra also had the most number of deaths at 369 (+27), followed by Gujarat, 162 (+11); Madhya Pradesh, 110 (+7); Delhi, 54 (+0); Rajasthan, 46 (+13); Andhra Pradesh, 31 (+0); Uttar Pradesh, 31 (+2); Telangana, 26 (+0); Tamil Nadu 24 (+0); West Bengal, 20 (+0); Karnataka, 20 (+1); Punjab, 18 (+0); Jammu & Kashmir, 7 (+1); Kerala, 4 (+0); Haryana, 3 (+0), Jharkhand, 3 (+0); and Bihar 2 (+0). Besides Odisha, HP, Meghalaya, and Assam had 1 death each. (Source: https://www.mohfw.gov.in/)

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No cases were reported in 47 districts in the past 14 days while 39 districts had not reported a case over the past 21 days. Besides, 17 districts had not reported a case for the last 28 days, timesofindia.com Apr 28 quoted the country’s minister of health as saying.

With the nationwide lockdown due to end on May 3, states were considering a further extension of restrictions in the coronavirus hotspots as the tally continued to soar, reported indianexpress.com Apr 28, citing a broad consensus that emerged in the meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and chief ministers the day before.

The lockdown will be extended in hotspots while restrictions will be eased in districts not affected by the infection, the report said.

A day after the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) asked all states to return the rapid test kits procured from two Chinese companies for giving faulty results, China said Apr 28 that it was “deeply concerned” over the evaluation result of the kits. It called it “unfair and irresponsible for certain individuals” to label Chinese products as ‘faulty’.

Numerous other countries have returned to China millions of Covid-19 products they had purchased from China during the current emergency situation due to defects.

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