Coronavirus live updates: Union minister Nitin Gadkari tests positive

Nearly 96 per cent of Pakistan's coronavirus patients have made a successful recovery, a status report issued on Wednesday by the country's nerve centre monitoring the pandemic read. According to the National Command and Operations Centre (NCOC), "290,760 people recovered so far across Pakistan, making it a significant count" and showing that 95.93 per cent of the patients recovered, with 303,089 total cases, of which 5,936 were active ones," Geo news reported.

A hospital in India has deployed a customer-service robot to patrol its wards, connecting coronavirus patients to friends and relatives. Mitra, meaning "friend" in Hindi, is best known for interacting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi at an event in 2017.

Russia's sovereign wealth fund said on Wednesday it will supply India's Dr Reddy's Laboratories with 100 million doses of the Sputnik-V vaccine against Covid-19 once it receives regulatory approval in India. Clinical trials of the Russian vaccine in India are expected to follow and to be held jointly with the Indian firm. Both the trials and supply deal depend on domestic regulatory approval.

The Covid-19 tally has reached 29,208 in Aurangabad district of Maharashtra with 406 new additions, an official release said on Wednesday.The death toll mounted to 824 with 9 more people succumbing to the infection on Monday, it said, adding that the 406 cases were reported on Tuesday.

Singapore's Covid-19 cases reached 57,515 on Wednesday after 27 new coronavirus infections, including six who arrived from India, were recorded, according to the health ministry. Among the new cases, two are imported infections and the other two are from the community involving foreigners holding work passes.

Amid growing anger over a bottleneck in Britain's creaking coronavirus testing system, the government promised on Wednesday to do whatever it takes to boost laboratory capacity that has left people across the land with no way to get a Covid-19 test. In an attempt to slow one of the highest coronavirus death tolls in the West, Prime Minister Boris Johnson promised in May to create a "world-beating" system to test and trace people exposed to the virus.

China and the United Arab Emirates have seen some positive results in their Phase III Covid-19 vaccine trials, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told a news briefing in Beijing on Monday. The United Arab Emirates on Monday granted emergency approval for use of a coronavirus vaccine, six weeks after human trials in the Gulf Arab state started.

Labour Minister Santosh Gangwar on Wednesday said the central government has taken a number of steps for the welfare of labourers during the pandemic, including disbursement of Rs 5,000 crore relief to over 2 crore building and construction workers. Besides with efforts of the government, stuck wages of about Rs 295 crore were released to about two lakh workers during the Covid-19 pandemic. In statement issued by the labour ministry, Gangwar said, "a number of unprecedented steps have been taken by the union government for labour welfare and employment including for migrant workers across India during Covid-19 pandemic".

Average daily deaths of Covid-19 patients witnessed an increase of around 77 percent in first two weeks of September as compared to the ones in April. The case fatality rate, however, remained low at just 1.60 percent. Indore reported 69 Covid-19 deaths in first 14 days of this month at an average of around 10 deaths in two days, while in April the average was around six deaths every two days, as per the health bulletin of chief medical and health officer of the district. The case fatality rate in September weeks remained low at 1.60 percent, which was around 10 percent for the whole of April. The district reported around 140 deaths between March 24 and April 30, the bulletin figures showed.

The government on Wednesday said more than 30 vaccine candidates for coronavirus have been supported, and three of them are in advance stages of trials now, while four are in advanced pre-clinical development stage.