New Delhi, Jul 18: Textiles Minister Smriti Irani was today given the additional charge of the Information and Broadcasting Ministry after M Venkaiah Naidu resigned from the Cabinet to contest the vice-presidential poll.
The portfolio of urban development, which too was with Naidu, was given to Narendra Singh Tomar, Minister for Social Justice and Empowerment, the PMO said.
The BJP had yesterday decided to field Naidu as NDA's candidate for the post of vice president.
India's COVID-19 tally raced past the seven lakh-mark with 22,252 fresh infections on Tuesday, five days after crossing the six lakh post, while the death toll climbed to 20,160 as 467 more people succumbed to the disease, according to the Union health ministry.
With this, the country has recorded over 20,000 cases of the infection for the fifth consecutive day.
India's coronavirus infection caseload stands at 7,19,665, the ministry's data updated at 8 am showed.
With a steady rise, the number of recoveries stands at 4,39,947, while there are 2,59,557 active cases of coronavirus infection in the country.
"Thus, around 61.13 % of patients have recovered so far," an official said.
The total number of confirmed cases also includes foreigners.
Of the 467 deaths reported in the last 24 hours, 204 are from Maharashtra, 61 from Tamil Nadu, 48 from Delhi, 29 from Karnataka, 24 from Uttar Pradesh, 22 from West Bengal, 17 from Gujarat.
Telangana and Haryana reported 11 deaths each; Madhya Pradesh nine; Andhra Pradesh seven; Jammu and Kashmir six; Rajasthan and Punjab five each; Bihar, Kerala and Odisha two each; and Arunachal Pradesh and Jharkhand one each.
New Delhi, May 29: More than 38,000 doctors, including those retired from the Armed Forces Medical Services, have volunteered to help the government in its fight against COVID-19 pandemic, a senior official said on Friday.
On March 25, the government had made an appeal to doctors, including the retired ones, to come forward and join the efforts to fight the pandemic.
"38,162 volunteer doctors, including retired government, Armed Forces Medical Services, public sector undertaking or private doctors have signed up with the government to battle COVID-19 pandemic," the official said.
The official further said Niti Aayog has sent a list of names of these doctors to Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA).
In a statement posted on Niti Aayog's website on March 25, the government had said those who wish to contribute to this noble mission may register themselves through a link provided on the Aayog's website.
"The Government of India requests for volunteer doctors who are fit and willing to be available for providing their services in the public health facilities and the training hospitals in the near future.
"We appeal to such doctors to come forward at this hour of need. You could also be a retired government, Armed Forces Medical Services, public sector undertaking or a private doctor," the statement had said.
It had noted that in case the outbreak leads to a high number of infected individuals, India's public health facilities will face tremendous load to take care of a large number of patients.
Many countries, including the US, Italy, the UK and Vietnam, had also urged retired health workers to come back to work amid the pandemic.
The number of COVID-19 cases in India has climbed to 1,65,799, making it the world's ninth worst-hit country by the coronavirus pandemic.
The Health Ministry on Friday said the death toll due to COVID-19 rose to 4,706 in the country.
Jun 3: Emphasising that airlines are clearly the safest mode of transportation, IndiGo CEO Ronojoy Dutta on Tuesday said there is no evidence yet of coronavirus infection getting transmitted among passengers onboard an aeroplane.
His comments against the backdrop of instances of some passengers, who had taken flights after resumption of domestic air services on May 25, testing positive for coronavirus.
"Those people had the virus before they got on to the aeroplane. What is noteworthy is that they have done the tracing after that. There is no evidence of transmission onboard there... that is a very encouraging sign on the safety of airline travel," he said during an earnings call.
According to him, airlines are clearly the safest mode of transportation and there is no evidence yet of contamination on an aircraft.
"You can come in contaminated but so far there is no evidence of passing it on to a fellow passenger," he noted.
Amid concerns over the coronavirus pandemic, aviation regulator DGCA has asked airlines to ensure that to the extent possible, middle seat in flights should be kept empty.
In this regard, Dutta said the airline would keep the middle seat empty wherever it can and "where we have to fill the middle seat, we will have the extra protective gown".
To a query about possible hedging of fuel prices, he said it would be a dumb idea and that airlines adjust to ups and downs in fuel prices.
"I can't overemphasise what a dumb idea it will be for an airline to hedge fuel prices. I looked at it from different angles and it is not a good idea... we looked at hedging and we talked about it at the board level and we said no," he noted.
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We better prepare another list of those who got killed by saffron terrorists and send it to President of India.
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