Los Angeles, Nov 18: Four people were shot dead and six others wounded while watching a football game in the backyard of a central California home on Sunday, police said.
"Three people died on scene," deputy Fresno police chief Michael Reed told reporters.
"One was critical and... succumbed to his injuries" after being rushed to a hospital, he added.
Washington, Mar 26: Indian-American hoteliers have come forward to rescue the stranded Indian students in the US following implementation of lockdown measures in the country in response to the rapidly-spreading coronavirus pandemic, offering them free accommodation and free meals.
With the students scrambling for a roof over their heads after being asked to vacate their hostels and India banning international flights for a week from March 22 due to the coronavirus pandemic, more than 6,000 rooms in nearly 700 hotels were offered to them by Wednesday following a call from the Indian Embassy.
The Indian Embassy have been running a round-the-clock helpline since last week for the students in the US, who number over 2,50,000.
Most of these hotels offered are in and around universities and colleges, but the hotel owners from across the country have come up in large numbers to the call given by community leaders, who have roped in Asian American Hotel Owners Association (AAHOA) for the purpose.
India's Ambassador to the US Taranjit Singh Sandhu said in a tweet, "It is heartening to see that Indian; Indian-American and other hotel owners are coming forward to help people with accommodation in these testing times. Together we can overcome the fight against COVID19!"
"The Indian community has come together to help the student and many hotel owners have offered their rooms free of cost to them. Many of them are also offering free meals to these students," Chicago-based community leader Nirav Patel told PTI.
Indian-American hotelier couple K K Mehta and Chandra Mehta have offered more than 100 rooms to Indian students at their two prime properties each near the Times Square and Barclays Center in New York City, said Jaipur Foot USA chairman Prem Bhandari on behalf of the hotels.
The Indian Consulate in New York had contacted them about this 10 days ago, he said.
"These students are the future of both India and the United States. All the top Indian-American CEOs, scientists and doctors came to this country as a student. It's our moral duty to help them with our resources," Bhandari said.
Regional director of AAHOA Upper Midwest Kalpesh Joshi said they had created a master list of the availability hotel rooms, which was being constantly updated.
Free accommodation would be allocated in coordination with the Indian Embassy and its consulates, he said.
"The Indian Embassy and its consulates are working tirelessly to get these students rooms," he added.
Joshi has also sent out a video message to his hotelier colleagues: "Because of the coronavirus outbreak, our Indian students in the US are out of shelter. Let's work together. As a hotelier, I would like to request all my hotelier friends to come forward... let's provide some rooms to the students."
Boston-based Computer Society of India (North America) has collaborated with AAHOA to help students and Indian IT professionals searching for emergency accommodation due to the COVID-19 lockdown.
Anyone who is having financial hardship will be given hotel accommodation either free of cost or the rates will not be more than USD 50, said the Computer Society of India (North America).
Minesh Patel, the chairman of Virginia Asian American Store Association, said between Richmond, Norfolk, and Virginia Beach, Indian-American hotel owners can help in arranging accommodation for over 500 Indian students.
Florida-based Vipul Patel, the national president of Asian American Store Owners Association, said support for the Indian students have been pouring in from the Indian-American hoteliers.
"I have not come across any hotel owner who said no to us," Patel said.
Rooms would be allocated to students on the recommendation of the Indian Embassy and its consulates in Houston, Chicago, Atlanta, San Francisco and New York.
The Indian Consulate in New York was the first to take a lead in this regard. It has worked with Hammock Worldwide Hotels and Resorts to provide temporary accommodation for the students at a flat rate of USD 50 per night.
Joshi said that initially there was a suggestion to charge a convenience fee of USD 20-25 per day from the students.
"But when a few of them offered free rooms and free meals, everyone agreed to it," he said.
According to Johns Hopkins University coronavirus tracker, the number of deaths caused by the novel coronavirus in the US rose to 1,031 with 68,572 confirmed cases. The US has the third highest number of confirmed cases behind China and Italy.
Beijing, Feb 18: A hospital director at the epicentre of China's virus epidemic died on Tuesday, state media said, the latest medical worker to fall victim to the new coronavirus spreading across the country.
The COVID-19 virus, which is believed to have originated in Wuhan late last year, has infected more than 72,000 people and killed nearly 1,900.
Liu Zhiming, the director of Wuchang Hospital in Wuhan, died Tuesday morning after "all-out rescue efforts failed," state broadcaster CCTV reported.
China said last week that six medical workers had died from the virus, while 1,716 have been infected.
Liu's death was initially reported by Chinese media and bloggers shortly after midnight on Tuesday -- but the stories were later deleted and replaced with reports that doctors were still trying to save him.
After initial reports of his death were denied, the hospital told AFP on Tuesday morning that doctors were giving him life-saving treatment.
Liu's death has echoes of that of Wuhan ophthalmologist Li Wenliang, who had been punished by authorities for sounding the alarm about the virus in late December.
Li's death prompted a national outpouring of grief as well as anger against the authorities, who were accused of mishandling the crisis.
People took to social media to mourn Liu on Tuesday, with many users on the Twitter-like Weibo platform drawing critical comparisons between Liu's death and Li's.
In both cases their deaths were initially reported in state media posts -- later deleted -- and their deaths denied, before being finally confirmed again.
"Has everyone forgotten what happened to Li Wenliang? They forcefully attempted resuscitation after he died," one Weibo commenter wrote.
Another commenter said, Liu "already died last night, (but) some people are addicted to torturing corpses".
A hashtag about Liu's death had 29 million views by Tuesday afternoon.
Doctors in Wuhan face shortages of masks and protective bodysuits, with some even wearing makeshift hazmat suits and continuing to work despite showing respiratory symptoms, health workers have told AFP.
Hubei province and its capital Wuhan have been the hardest hit by the virus, accounting for nearly 1,800 of the deaths from the virus so far.
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.
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