LIVE: Coronavirus cases in Ahmedabad breach 10,000-mark, 24 deaths recorded

Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Saturday said the state would be able to survive any other crisis after Covid-19 as it was in the forefront of developing innovative wasy to fight the pandemic.

"Kerala is in the forefront of developing innovative ways to overcome the Covid-19 pandemic and will be able to overcome any crisis which might come.

Most of the cases currently being reported in Kerala have come from outside the state.

Days after Ladakh was declared coronavirus free, six fresh cases have come to light in the union territory over the past three days with almost all of them having a travel history outside the Himalayan region, officials said on Saturday.

All the six new patients, five in Kargil and one in Leh, have been moved from the administrative quarantine to the COVID hospital for treatment.

The railways on Saturday said 50 per cent of its 5,213 isolation coaches meant for coronavirus patients will now be used to run Shramik Special trains.

Sikkim reports first Covid-19 case as 25-year-old student who recently returned from Delhi tests positive: Official

The Railways has drawn up a schedule to operate 2,600 Shramik Special trains over the next 10 days across the country to ferry around 36 lakh migrant workers, stranded due to the Covid-19 lockdown, to their home states, Chairman, Railway Board V K Yadav said on Saturday.

He said that the railways has run 2,600 Shramik Special trains in the last 23 days carrying around 36 lakh stranded migrants.

Three more men belonging to peripheral villages here tested positive for the Covid-19 on Saturday taking the tally to 25 with a woman having been discharged.

Director of Health and Family Welfare Services S Mohan Kumar said in a statement that the total active cases in the Union Territory was 25 now after the discharge of the woman patient from the government general hospital in Karaikal on Friday.

Three deaths and 163 new coronavirus cases were reported in Rajasthan on Saturday taking the total number of fatalities due to Covid-19 to 156 and positive cases to 6,657.

Two deaths were reported from Jaipur and one from Kota, the official said.

Twenty-two of 76 Haryana natives deported back from the US have tested positive for coronavirus infection, state Health Minister Anil Vij said on Saturday.

Seventy-six Haryana people were part of a group of over 160 Indians who had arrived at Amritsar in Punjab by a special chartered flight earlier this week.

At least 18 police personnel, including an officer, have died of COVID-19 in Maharashtra so far, an official said on Saturday.

The Maharashtra police, which is ensuring a strict enforcement of the lockdown in the state, has been severely hit by the pandemic.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday discussed the situation arising out of the Covid-19 pandemic with Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and Mauritius Prime Minister Pravind Jugnauth.Sri Lanka is fighting Covid-19 effectively under Rajapaksa's leadership, Modi wrote on Twitter.

With a vaccine still a long distance away, efforts to repurpose old medications used for other ailments provide hope of an early counter to COVID-19, say scientists, placing the antiviral remdesivir on top of the list of possible contenders.

As Covid-19 continues its spread -- crossing 5.2 million cases and 3,38,000 fatalities on Saturday -- several categories of drugs are under clinical trial.

As Indian firms scramble to develop a vaccine for coronavirus, experts feel that research in the country is still at a nascent stage and any concrete breakthrough is not likely within a year.

The Indian government and private firms have stepped up efforts to develop a vaccine to halt the spread of Covid-19 which has claimed over 3,700 lives with more than 1,25,000 cases in the country.

PM CARES Fund Trust has decided to allocate ₹100 crore for support to coronavirus vaccine development efforts.

In the biggest ever spike, Karnataka has reported 196 new Covid-19 cases and a related fatality, taking the total number of infections in the state to 1,939 and the death toll to 42, the health department said on Saturday.

It said 172 out of the new cases reported were returnees from neighbouring Maharashtra.

Domestic flight serviceswill resume from Mangaluru International Airport (MIA) from May 25 as per the instructions of Union Civil Aviation Ministry.

Six Indigo and SpiceJet flights will be operated from Mangaluru to Bengaluru, Mumbai and Chennai.