Coronavirus live updates: Maharashtra government allows to reopen gyms and fitness centres from Dussehra

With 2,880 fresh cases, the Covid-19 tally of Uttar Pradesh climbed to 4,52,660 on Saturday. A total of 4,11,611 Covid-19 patients have been discharged from hospitals after treatment, including 3,528 in the last 24 hours, Additional Chief Secretary, Health Amit Mohan Prasad said. With this, the recovery rate among coronavirus patients in the state stands at 90.93 per cent, he said, adding that the daily number of patients getting discharged from hospitals is more than the number of fresh cases.

Malaysia reported 869 new coronavirus cases on Saturday, its highest daily count so far, health authorities said. The Southeast Asian country, which has imposed targeted lockdowns this month as infections surged, has had a total of 19,627 infections.

The Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) and Dr Reddy's Laboratories Ltd have received renewed approval to conduct late-stage clinical trials in India of the Russian Covid-19 vaccine, the sovereign wealth fund said on Saturday. Large-scale trials of the Sputnik V vaccine in India were first announced and then knocked back by Indian regulators, who said the scale of Phase I and II trials conducted in Russia earlier this year was too small, requesting that they be repeated.

Any safe and effective vaccine against Covid-19 may not need to be administered annually, unlike vaccines for influenza, Dr. Richard Mihigo, the program area manager for immunization and vaccine development at the World Health Organization's (WHO) Regional Office for Africa, told Sputnik in an interview.

Scientists have laid out an approach to block a protein that the novel coronavirus uses to cut and disable crucial components of the immune system and to produce copies of itself, an advance that may lead to new drugs against Covid-19. The researchers, including those from the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (UT Health San Antonio) in the US, developed two molecules that inhibit the molecular "scissor" enzyme used by the coronavirus called SARS-CoV-2-PLpro.

“Andorra faces both short-term and long-term challenges common to European and other IMF member countries which have been aggravated by the (coronavirus) pandemic,” IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said in a statement.

Results of the global `Solidarity Trial’ which declared the widely-prescribed anti-viral drug, Remdesivir ineffective for saving lives or shortening duration of hospital stay, will lead to curbing its indiscriminate use for Covid-19 patients in India. With interim results of the largest global trial by the WHO published on Thursday, there is now a need for a fresh treatment protocol by the apex medical body, ICMR, explaining the effectiveness of drugs being used, doctors told TOI.

Two American companies expect to apply for emergency approval for their Covid-19 vaccines by late November, welcome news as the US crossed eight million confirmed cases amid a third surge of its coronavirus epidemic. Pfizer said Friday it hopes to move ahead with its vaccine after safety data is available in the third week of November, weeks after the November 3 presidential election.