Another BJP worker's body found hanging from pole in West Bengal

Kota (Rajasthan), Jun 6: A 14-year-old boy allegedly hanged himself to death on early Saturday morning shortly after he stopped playing PUBG throughout the night and went to sleep, said police. 

Railway Colony police station’s in-charge Hansraj Meena said the boy, a class 9 student and son of an Army man, was found hanging from the grill of the ventilator in his bedroom on early Saturday morning. 

Meena said according to the boy’s family members, the boy had downloaded the gaming programme on his mother’s mobile phone only three days back but had been playing the game virtually continuously for the last three days. 

He kept on playing the game till 3 am in a room in which his brother was studying, said Meena, adding the boy went to adjoining to sleep after that. His body was found hanging from the ventilator’s grill in the morning, he said, adding the boy was rushed to MBS Hospital, where he was declared “brought dead”. 

No suicide note was recovered in the case, the SHO said. The boy lived in Gandhi Colony in the city along with his mother and brother, while his father, a Tamil Nadu native and Army man, is currently posted in Arunachal Pradesh. The boy’s body has been kept in hospital’s morgue for the postmortem, the SHO said.

Beijing/Zurich, Mar 4: China has approved the use of Swiss drugmaker Roche's anti-inflammation drug Actemra for patients who develop severe complications from the coronavirus as it urgently hunts for new ways to combat the deadly infection that is spreading worldwide.

China is hoping that some older drugs could stop severe cytokine release syndrome (CRS), or cytokine storms, an overreaction of the immune system which is considered a major factor behind catastrophic organ failure and death in some coronavirus patients.

Actemra, a biologic drug approved in 2010 in the United States for rheumatoid arthritis (RA), inhibits high Interleukin 6 (IL-6) protein levels that drive some inflammatory diseases.

China's National Health Commission said in treatment guidelines published online on Wednesday that Actemra can now be used to treat coronavirus patients with serious lung damage and high IL-6 levels.

Separately, researchers in the country are testing Actemra, known generically as tocilizumab, in a clinical trial expected to include 188 coronavirus patients and running until May 10.

Roche, which donated 14 million yuan ($2.02 million) worth of Actemra during February, said the trial was initiated independently by a third party with the aim of exploring the efficacy and safety of the drug in coronavirus patients with CRS.

It added that there was currently no published clinical trial data on the drug's safety or efficacy against the virus.

More than 3,000 people have died and 93,000 have been infected by the novel coronavirus thought to have originated in Wuhan, China, before spreading to around 90 countries including the United States, Italy, Switzerland, France and Germany.

The Swiss company, for which China is its No. 2 market behind the United States, also makes diagnostic gear to detect the coronavirus.

Since Actemra's approval a decade ago, it has become a go-to drug against other inflammatory conditions, including cytokine storms in cancer patients receiving cell therapies from Novartis and Gilead Sciences.

In 2012 it helped save the life of a young U.S. girl, the first child to be treated for leukaemia with Novatis' Kymriah, from a post-treatment rush of IL-6.

Priced at between $20-30,000 annually for RA according to SSR Health, Roche's medicine is also used for rare juvenile arthritis and giant cell arteritis, or inflammation of the blood vessels.

New Delhi, Jun 11: The death toll due to COVID-19 rose to 8,102 and the number of cases climbed to 2,86,579 in the country after it registered the highest single-day spike of 357 fatalities and 9,996 cases till Thursday 8 AM, according to the Union Health Ministry data.

The number of recoveries remained more than the active novel coronavirus cases for the second consecutive day.

The number of active cases stands at 1,37,448 while 1,41,028 people have recovered and one patient has migrated to another country, as per the data.   

"Thus, around 49.21 per cent patients have recovered so far," an official said.

The total number of confirmed cases include foreigners.

Of the 357 new deaths reported till Thursday morning, 149 were in Maharashtra, 79 in Delhi, 34 in Gujarat, 20 in Uttar Pradesh, 19 in Tamil Nadu, 17 in West Bengal, eight in Telangana, seven each in Madhya Pradesh and Haryana, four in Rajasthan, three each in Jammu and Kashmir and Karnataka, two each in Kerala and Uttarakhand, one each in Andhra Pradesh, Bihar and Himachal Pradesh.

Out of the total 8,102 fatalities, Maharashtra tops the tally with 3,438 deaths followed by Gujarat with 1,347 deaths, Delhi with 984, Madhya Pradesh with 427, West Bengal with 432, Tamil Nadu with 326, Uttar Pradesh with 321, Rajasthan with 259 and Telangana with 156 deaths.

The death toll reached 78 in Andhra Pradesh, 69 in Karnataka and 55 in Punjab. Jammu and Kashmir has reported 51 fatalities due to the coronavirus disease, while 52 deaths have been reported from Haryana, 33 from Bihar, 18 from Kerala, 15 from Uttarakhand, nine from Odisha and eight from Jharkhand.

Chhattisgarh and Himachal Pradesh have registered six COVID-19 fatalities each, Chandigarh has five while Assam has recorded four deaths so far. Meghalaya, Tripura and Ladakh have reported one COVID-19 fatality each, according to the ministry's data.

More than 70 per cent of the deaths are due to comorbidities, the ministry's website stated.