India invokes special provisions for the armed forces to combat Covid-19 crisis
From CNN's Swati Gupta
The Indian government has invoked special provisions and granted emergency financial powers to the Armed Forces to combat the second wave of Covid-19 in the country, the country's Defense Minister Rajnath Singh announced on Twitter Friday.
"These powers will help Formation Commanders to establish and operate quarantine facilities/ hospitals and to undertake procurement/ repair of eqpt/ items/ material/ stores, besides provisioning of various services and works required to support the ongoing effort against COVID," he wrote. India recorded 386,452 Covid-19 cases on Friday, another record daily rise of cases, according to a CNN tally of figures from the Indian Ministry of Health.
This is the ninth day in a row the country has added more than 300,000 cases a day, bringing the total number to 18,762,976.
8:25 a.m. ET, April 30, 2021
The first US Covid-19 relief supply arrives in India
Ground staff unload Covid-19 relief supplies sent from the US, at Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi, on April 30. Prakash Singh/Pool/AFP/Getty Images
The first US plane carrying shipments of Covid-19 aid to India landed in Delhi this morning.
India is battling a deepening coronavirus crisis: 379,257 new cases were reported on Thursday, a new global record, according to figures released by the country's health ministry. The country also reported 3,645 deaths, the highest number of Covid-19 deaths the country has reported in a single day. Even more deaths and cases may be going unreported.
Those US aid shipments — the first by the Biden administration — left Travis Air Force Base in California aboard a US Air Force aircraft on Wednesday. Another shipment will leave Travis Air Force Base on Friday with PPE, oxygen, test kits, masks.
Jeremy Konyndyk, the senior advisor coordinating agency-wide Covid-19 efforts at the United States Agency for International Development, told CNN Thursday that the shipment of supplies on its way to India "has been developed really closely in coordination with them."
Earlier in the week, US President Joe Biden pledged to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi that the United States would provide "a range of emergency assistance, including oxygen-related supplies, vaccine materials, and therapeutics."
7:56 a.m. ET, April 30, 2021
India Covid-19 ICU chief: "What we are seeing is nothing short of an apocalypse"
From CNN's Adrienne Vogt
An intensive care unit chief in India said the devastating coronavirus wave in the country is “nothing short of an apocalypse.”
“We've had patients being rushed in, almost wards getting filled up overnight, 90 patients in less than 12 hours. The problem with this virus is the second wave is extremely contagious, extremely aggressive, and it is affecting the younger population in a significantly different way that we had not expected,” said Dr. Farah Husain, head of the Covid-19 ICU unit at Lok Nayak Hospital in Delhi.
“We are feeling very, very tired. And the fact that we’ve not able to control the numbers is something which is extremely shocking for us,” she told CNN's John Berman.
Husain said that the health care system has been overwhelmed, and many were not expecting the crush of the second wave.
“It’s like … Covid is there in every house,” Husain said.
She encouraged people to get vaccinated when they can to prevent severe sickness and hospitalization.
Watch:
3:45 a.m. ET, April 30, 2021
Japan reports highest number of Covid-19 cases since late January
From Chie Kobayashi in Tokyo and Eric Cheung in Hong Kong
Pedestrians are seen at Shibuya crossing in Tokyo, Japan, on April 29. Yuichi Yamazaki/Getty Images
Japan reported 5,795 Covid-19 cases Thursday, the highest number of cases since late January, according to the country's Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare.
Osaka, the second largest city in Japan, reported 44 new deaths, the most deaths in a single day for the area since the beginning of the pandemic, local authorities said.
Up to 98.2% of hospital beds for patients with serious symptoms in Osaka have been occupied, the local government said.
The city reported a total of 1,172 cases, while Tokyo reported 1,027 cases, local governments reported. As of Thursday, Japan has so far confirmed a total of 580,988 Covid-19 cases, according to the ministry.
2:14 a.m. ET, April 30, 2021
As India's crematoriums overflow with Covid victims, pyres burn through the night
From CNN's Jessie Yeung, Clarissa Ward and Rishabh Pratap
Workers can be seen at a crematorium where multiple funeral pyres are burning for patients who lost their lives to Covid-19 in New Delhi, India, on April 29. Anindito Mukherjee/Getty Images
Flames crackle over the wails and prayers of grieving families as they mourn loved ones laid on funeral pyres that burn through the night in New Delhi.
As India's second wave of coronavirus sweeps through the country, bodies are piling up faster than workers can cremate them or build new pyres.
"Before the pandemic, we used to cremate eight to 10 people (daily)," said Jitender Singh Shunty, head of the Seemapuri crematorium in eastern New Delhi. "Now, we are cremating 100 to 120 a day."
Demand is so high that Seemapuri crematorium has expanded into its parking lot, where dozens of workers construct new cremation platforms from bricks and mortar. There is so little space and so many bodies that families have to get a ticket and wait in line for their turn.
So many fires have been lit in New Delhi that wood stocks are running low.
On Tuesday, Jai Prakash, the mayor of North Delhi, wrote a letter to Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, asking that the forest department provide a steady supply.
In the meantime, families are having to pay for the wood to burn their relatives' bodies.Many see no choice, as they jockey for space at crowded crematoriums.
There are now over 150 million cases of COVID-19 worldwide, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.
It comes less than 13 months after the World Health Organization officially declared the novel coronavirus outbreak had developed into a pandemic.
Despite rapid development of multiple vaccines for the virus and a number of countries bringing their Covid-19 infections under control, there are still hundreds of thousands of new cases every day.
According to Johns Hopkins, there were more than 905,000 new infections recorded globally on Wednesday alone.
To date, more than 3.1 million people have died from the coronavirus worldwide.
1:22 a.m. ET, April 30, 2021
People will likely need a booster shot about 9 to 12 months after their second dose of Moderna Covid-19 vaccine, says company president
From CNN Health’s Lauren Mascarenhas
A medical staff member prepares a syringe with a vial of the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine at a pop up vaccine clinic in the Staten Island borough of New York City, on April 16. Angela Weiss/AFP/Getty Images
People will likely need a booster about 9 to 12 months after their second dose of the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine, company president Stephen Hoge said Thursday.
“I think somewhere between 9 and 12 months after your vaccination series is when people will probably need a booster vaccine -- only while the pandemic is raging,” Hoge said during an event hosted on the social media platform Clubhouse. "That’s because we need to keep people as protected as possible, while there's this really high risk of infection.”
Hoge said that he hopes the boosters will not be necessary once the coronavirus pandemic is over.
“My sense is that we all fear a winter epidemic, with respiratory viruses like influenza at the same time,” he said. “Giving a boost going into the fall is going to be the right thing. We’ve beaten back the pandemic. We need to stay ahead of it.”
Hoge noted the decision to recommend booster doses of Covid-19 vaccines will be up to public health officials, including the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“Co-administration with an influenza vaccine would be the ideal way to do it,” Hoge said. “One of the things we're going to look hard at over the summer this year, is how do we create data so that the CDC can provide that recommendation to healthcare systems so that it can be done as a single visit.”
12:40 a.m. ET, April 30, 2021
Covid-19 deaths top 400,000 in Brazil as daily death tolls remain in the thousands
From Rodrigo Pedroso in São Paulo
Aerial view of graves of Covid-19 victims at the Nossa Senhora Aparecida cemetery in Manaus, Amazon state, Brazil, on April 15 Michael Dantas/AFP/Getty Images
Brazil has now surpassed 400,000 deaths from coronavirus. The country's health ministry reported more than 3,000 new Covid-19 deaths Thursday, raising the total number of deaths recorded during the pandemic to 401,186.
Brazil is the second country worldwide to officially pass that grim milestone, following the United States, which is nearing 575,000 deaths.
The South American country's death toll rapidly increased after the Christmas and New Year holidays – when people often travel during school and company summer breaks – turning 2021 into the most severe period in Brazil’s outbreak since the novel coronavirus reached the country in March 2020.
"With sadness all around, Brazil today registers 400,000 victims of Covid-19,” Carlos Lula, president of the Nacional Council of Health Secretaries, said in a statement.
“The number reflects the pain of families that lost parents, grandparents, children and siblings in a fast, violent and often lonely way. It also reflects mismanagement and the lack of centralized coordination at the federal level.”
As the Covid-19 death toll has risen in Brazil, where far-right President Jair Bolsonaro has resisted lockdowns and overseen an often slow and bumpy vaccine rollout, young people are making up a greater share of deaths as older Brazilians are among the few to have secured a vaccine.
Fiocruz, a Brazilian public health research institute, recently reported that patients between the ages of 20 to 29 had the most pronounced increase in Covid-19 deaths among all adults between early January and mid-April this year.
Data from the first full epidemiological week of January compared to the second week of April showed that deaths among Covid-19 patients in that age group grew 1,081%.
In the meantime, Brazil's vaccination campaign is running at a slow pace, with about 6% of its 210 million people fully vaccinated. Several state capitals halted vaccinations this week due to a shortage of Coronavac, one of four approved vaccines in Brazil.
12:04 a.m. ET, April 30, 2021
“Responsibility is ours,” spokesman of India’s ruling party says about the Covid-19 crisis
From CNN’s Emmet Lyons and Henry Hullah
The responsibility for the devastating second wave that is sweeping India belongs “first and foremost” to the government but the situation could not have been foreseen, according to Narendra Taneja, a spokesperson for the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
“We are in power, we are the government in India so of course responsibility is first and foremost ours, good or bad, whatever it is," Taneja told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour. "It is our responsibility and we’re trying our very level best."
“A lot of people are saying that… we knew in February. At that time, scientists and doctors were more or less of the same view,” he said.
“Evidently something went wrong, evidently we were hit by a tsunami, and as you know, you’re often not aware. In most cases 80-90% reasons could be external. We don’t know. We don’t want to blame anybody. We know we’re in power, we are responsible.. our focus is now on how we can save lives.”
Indian Prime Minister Modi and the BJP have come under fire for holding several mass rallies in the eastern West Bengal state with thousands in attendance between March and April ahead of state elections. Thursday was the last day of voting and polls have now closed in West Bengal.
When pressed by Amanpour as to why his party continued to hold such events as cases rose, Taneja pushed back and said the “autonomous” Election Commission of India was responsible for allowing elections events to continue to take place over a one and a half month period.
