Govt orders sealing of state, district borders

The nationwide tally of confirmed Coronavirus cases crossed the 1,000-mark and the death toll reached 29, even as the central government ordered sealing of all state and district borders to check community transmission of the deadly virus by migrant workers and asked those having left already to be quarantined for 14 days. The government carried out a comprehensive review of the situation arising out of the coronavirus pandemic including treatment of affected people, movement of thousands of migrant labourers and supplies of petroleum products and essential commodities across the country under the nation-wide lockdown. The review was conducted by a Group of Ministers headed by Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and comprising several key members of the Union Cabinet including Home Home Minister Amit Shah, Food Minister Ram Vilas Paswan, Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri, Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan and Railway Minister Piyush Goyal.

Panels set up to put economy back on track

The government constituted 11 empowered groups to suggest measures to ramp up healthcare, put the economy back on track and reduce misery of people as quickly as possible post the 21-day lockdown imposed to contain the coronavirus pandemic. These empowered groups have been constituted to ensure a comprehensive and integrated response to COVID-19 and will work under the overall guidance of P.K. Mishra, principal secretary to the Prime Minister. These groups are empowered to identify problem areas and provide effective solutions, delineate policy, formulate plans, strategise operations and take all necessary steps for effective and time-bound implementation of plans, strategies or decisions in their respective areas, a notification issued by home secretary Ajay Kumar Bhalla stated. The Department of Expenditure has issued special instructions to enable expeditious decision making in procurement matters.

Trump warns peak US death rate likely in 2 weeks

Some one lakh people in the US may die from the coronavirus pandemic and the peak death rate was likely to hit the country in two weeks, President Donald Trump has warned, citing his health experts as he extended the “social distancing” guidelines until April 30. His statement came as the death toll in New York state, America’s epicentre of COVID-19, crossed the 1,000 mark. The total number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the US stood at 143,025 and 2,509 people have died in the country, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. Assuring his countrymen that he expects the US to be on its way to recovery by June 1, Trump told reporters at a televised White House news conference that he had to extend the social distancing measures till April 30, based on the advice from his two top public health advisors and members of the White House Task Force on Coronavirus.

Newsmakers

Joseph Lowery, a key ally of Martin Luther King in the US civil rights movement of the 1960s passed away at the age of 98. Lowery was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, by President Barack Obama in 2009.

Poland’s Krzysztof Penderecki, one of the world’s most celebrated composers, passed away at the age of 86. Penderecki won four Grammy awards for his music, most recently for best choral performance in 2016. 

Joe Diffie, a Grammy award-winning country music singer who had several chart-topping hits in the 1990s, has died of coronavirus in the US. He was 61.

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