London, May 23: British Prime Minister Theresa May is expected on Friday to announce her departure from office, The Times reported, without citing a source.
May will remain as prime minister while her successor is elected in a two-stage process under which two final candidates face a ballot of 125,000 Conservative Party members, the newspaper said.
Washington, Apr 2: The total US death toll from the coronavirus pandemic topped 4,000 early Wednesday, more than double the number from three days earlier, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.
The number of deaths was 4,076 -- more than twice the 2,010 recorded late Saturday.
More than 40 percent of recorded deaths nationally were in New York state, the Johns Hopkins data showed.
On Tuesday the United States exceeded the number of deaths in China, where the pandemic emerged in December before spreading worldwide.
The number of confirmed US cases has reached 189,510, the most in the world, though Italy and Spain have recorded more fatalities.
After initially downplaying the threat from new coronavirus in the early stages of the US outbreak, President Donald Trump warned of "a very, very painful two weeks" to come for the country on Tuesday.
Mumbai, May 7: Maharashtra Minister Nawab Malik on Wednesday accused the BJP-led Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka governments of adopting an uncooperative approach in taking back migrant workers hailing from these two states.
Mr Malik said that such a problem has not arisen with other states like Bihar, Rajasthan and another BJP-ruled state, Madhya Pradesh.
"They are creating new hurdles. There are no such problems in case of other states like Bihar, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and West Bengal though.
"The process (of sending back migrants) has been smooth in the case of these states," Mr Malik said.
The NCP leader alleged that the Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka governments either don't want the people hailing from their states to return or are deliberately creating hurdles so that out of job workers do not go back in big numbers.
The Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka government should understand that the migrant workers are not ready mentally to stay back in Maharashtra and want to return to their native states, Mr Malik said.
The NCP minister said the Maharashtra government has been sending the applications received from migrant workers to the nodal officers of their respective native districts.
Once the nodal officers (of the native districts) concerned approve the applications, the workers are sent back either by trains or private vehicles following their medical tests, Mr Malik added.
Ninety per cent of a sample group of coronavirus-recovered patients from a prominent hospital in China's Wuhan city where the pandemic broke out have reported lung damage and five per cent of them are again in quarantine after testing positive for the virus, according to a media report on Wednesday.
A team at the Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University led by Peng Zhiyong, director of the hospital's Intensive Care Unit, has been conducting follow-up visits with '100 recovered patients' since April.
The first phase of this one-year programme finished in July. The average age of the patients in the study is 59.
According to the first phase results, 90 per cent of the patients' lungs are still in a damaged state, which means their lungs ventilation and gas exchange functions have not recovered to the level of healthy people, state-run Global Times reported.
Peng's team conducted a six-minute walking test with the patients. They found that the recovered patients could only walk 400 metres in six minutes while their healthy peers could walk 500 metres in the same period.
Some recovered patients have to rely on oxygen machines even three months after being discharged from the hospital, Liang Tengxiao, a doctor from the Dongzhimen Hospital, Beijing University of Chinese Medicine, was quoted as saying by the report.
Liang's team is also conducting follow-up visits with recovered patients aged above 65.
The results also showed that antibodies against the novel coronavirus in 10 per cent of the 100 patients have disappeared.
Five per cent of them received negative results in Covid-19 nucleic acid tests but positive results in Immunoglobulin M (IgM) tests, and thus have to be quarantined again, the report said.
IgM is usually the first antibody produced by the immune system when a virus attacks. A positive result in an IgM test usually means that a person has just been infected by the virus.
It is still unclear if this means these people have been infected again.
The 100 patients' immune systems have not fully recovered as they showed a low level of B cells -- - a primary force for killing viruses in the human body -- but a high level of T cells which only recognise viral antigens outside infected cells.
"The results revealed that the patients’ immune systems are still recovering," Peng said.
The patients also suffered from depression and a sense of stigma. Most of the recovered patients told the team that their families were not willing to have dinner with them at the same table, the report said.
Less than half of the recovered patients have returned to work, it said.
The findings are significant as the coronavirus first emerged in Wuhan city.
Hubei province for which Wuhan is the provincial capital has reported a total of 68,138 confirmed Covid-19 cases till now. The disease has claimed 4,512 lives in the province, according to the official data.
China reported 27 new confirmed Covid-19 cases on Tuesday, including 22 locally-transmitted cases, the National Health Commission (NHC) said on Wednesday.
Comments
Add new comment