A 10-day complete lockdown has

been enforced from Thursday in Thane and two other civic administration limits adjoining Mumbai city to contain the spread of coronavirus, officials said.

Essential services and medical emergencies are exempted from the lockdown, while inter-city buses, autorickshaws and taxis will not be allowed to operate in these civic limits, they said.

The Thane Municipal Corporation (TMC), Kalyan Dombivali Municipal Corporation (KDMC) and Mira Bhayandar Municipal Corporation, all part of the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), jointly decided on the complete lockdown for next 10 days in view of the rising number of COVID-19 cases in these areas, the officials said.

The lockdown came into force from 7 am on Thursday and will continue till 7 am on July 12, they said.

The municipal corporations of Navi Mumbai and Panvel will enforce complete lockdown from July 3 midnight.

“We want to break the chain of coronavirus infection.

People working in essential services will be exempted from the lockdown and will be allowed to move out for work,” KDMC Commissioner Vijay Suryavanshi said.

A TMC official said inter-city bus services, auto- rickshaws, taxis and app-based cabs will not be allowed to operate.

“Medical emergencies are exempted. A patient can be accompanied by only one person in a cab or auto-rickshaw, he said.

Banks, ATMs, IT, ITeS, India Post, internet and data services and medical shops will be exempted from the lockdown, he said.

TMC Commissioner Dr Vipin Sharma, in an order issued on Tuesday, said the city will observe a total lockdown for 10 days from Thursday.

Non-essential services will not operate during this period, and nor would movement of vehicles for proposes other than medical and essential travel be allowed, the order said.

Movement of all essential goods as well as perishable items will be allowed during this period, it added.

Thane Collector Rajesh Narvekar on Wednesday said roads, market areas and other public places are becoming increasingly congested with the introduction of various concessions as per the ‘Mission Begin Again’ order.

Also, there is a lot of stress on the health system, police department and district administration. Against this backdrop, lockdown restrictions need to be re-enforced, he said.

Similar orders are applicable in Mira-Bhayandar.

Thane district on Wednesday registered 1,322 new coronavirus cases, pushing its overall tally to 34,646, the administration said.

Out of the total cases, Thane city reported 9,138 cases, Navi Mumbai reported 6,823 cases, while the tally in Kalyan was nearing 7,000.

The death toll in Thane district due to the viral infection has reached 1,094, including 340 in Thane, 217 in Navi Mumbai, 120 in Kalyan and 145 in Mira Bhayandar township.

For the first time since the COVID-19 outbreak, India recorded over 10,000 new cases in a day taking the tally to 2,97,535, while the death toll rose to 8,498 with a record single-day spike of 396 fatalities, according to the Union Health Ministry data.

The country has registered 10,956 new coronavirus infections in the last 24 hours till Friday 8 am.

India on Thursday went past the United Kingdom to become the fourth worst-hit nation by the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the Worldometer.

The number of active cases stands at 1,41,842, while 1,47,194 people have recovered and one patient has migrated, it said.

“Thus, around 49.47 per cent patients have recovered so far,” an official said.

The total number of confirmed cases include foreigners.

Of the 396 new deaths reported till Friday morning, 152 were in Maharashtra, 101 in Delhi, 38 in Gujarat, 24 in Uttar Pradesh, 23 in Tamil Nadu, 12 in Haryana, 10 in West Bengal, nine in Telangana, six in Rajasthan, four each in Madhya Pradesh and Punjab, three each in Bihar and Karnataka, two each in Andhra Pradesh, Assam and Puducherry and one in Jammu and Kashmir.

Out of the total 8,498 fatalities, Maharashtra tops the tally with 3,590 deaths followed by Gujarat with 1,385 deaths, Delhi with 1,085, West Bengal with 442, Madhya Pradesh with 431, Tamil Nadu with 349, Uttar Pradesh with 345, Rajasthan with 265 and Telangana with 165 deaths.

The death toll reached 80 in Andhra Pradesh, 72 in Karnataka, 64 in Haryana and 59 in Punjab.

Jammu and Kashmir has reported 52 fatalities due to the coronavirus disease, while 36 deaths have been reported from Bihar, 18 from Kerala, 15 from Uttarakhand, nine from Odisha and eight from Jharkhand.

Chhattisgarh, Assam and Himachal Pradesh have registered six COVID-19 fatalities each, Chandigarh has five, Puducherry has two, while Meghalaya, Tripura and Ladakh have reported one COVID-19 fatality each, according to ministry data.

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

The highest number of confirmed cases in the country are from Maharashtra at 97,648 followed by Tamil Nadu at 38,716, Delhi at 34,687, Gujarat at 22,032, Uttar Pradesh at 12,088, Rajasthan at 11,838 and Madhya Pradesh at 10,241, according to the health ministry’s data updated in the morning.

The number of COVID-19 cases has gone up to 9,768 in West Bengal, 6,245 in Karnataka, 5,983 in Bihar and 5,968 in Haryana.

It has risen to 5,429 in Andhra Pradesh, 4,574 in Jammu and Kashmir, 4,320 in Telangana and 3,386 in Odisha.

Assam has reported 3,319 novel coronavirus cases so far while Punjab has 2,887 cases. A total of 2,244 people have been infected by the virus in Kerala and 1,643 in Uttarakhand.

Jharkhand has registered 1,599 cases, while 1,398 cases have been reported from Chhattisgarh, 913 from Tripura, 470 from Himachal Pradesh, 417 from Goa, 366 from Manipur and 332 from Chandigarh.

Puducherry has 157 COVID-19 cases, Ladakh has 135, Nagaland has 128, Mizoram has 102, Arunachal Pradesh has 61, Meghalaya 44 while Andaman and Nicobar Islands has registered 38 infections so far.

Sikkim has reported 14 cases, while Dadar and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu together have reported 30 infections.

The ministry’s website said that 8,315 cases are being reassigned to states and “our figures are being reconciled with the ICMR”.

State-wise distribution is subject to further verification and reconciliation, it said.

Vuln!! Path it now!!

The AAP government is planning to set up mohalla clinics in the city’s commercial hubs including Nehru Place, Bhikaji Cama Place, and Subhash Place in order to provide medical facility to working class there.

The Kejriwal government has an aim of setting up 1,000 mohalla clinics by the end of this year and out of them, 105 such health facilities have come up in different areas of the national capital so far.

Government has identified 300 schools where such clinics will be set up for giving medical service to students near their study places.

A senior official said that government wants to provide health services to professionals working in commercial areas as many of them are not able to spare time for their health check up.

“We are contemplating setting up mohalla clinics in commercial hubs including Subhash Place, Bhikaji Cama Place and Nehru Place to provide medical services to working class.

Government is looking for land in these areas to open such clinics,” the official also said.

In his Independence Day speech, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had lauded his government’s works in health sector, saying that in the last one-and-a-half years, his government has “prepared” the people of Delhi by educating them besides making them healthy and giving skills.

New Delhi | Defending the move to end the customs duty exemption for import of 76 life saving drugs including those for treating cancer, AIDS and haemophilia, Government has said Indian manufacturers are already selling most of these drugs at cheaper prices.

It also claimed there will only be marginal increase in the prices of these imported drugs due to exemption withdrawal. It is to promote indigenous medicines. The Indian drug companies are perfectly capable of manufacturing these drugs for our domestic market. We are not only meeting the domestic demand but are also exporting them to 200 countries and economies.

Most of them are availabe at cheaper rates, said a senior Health Ministry official, who is also overseeing the functioning of Drug Controller General of India. He said there will be marginal increase in the prices of these imported drugs. In case of 95 per cent of these drugs, the custom duty  is only 2.5 per cent.

So if there is an increase, it would be marginal, he said. While the medicines directly impact the treatment of crucial health problems like HIV AIDS and haemophilia, the official said majority of such patients are treated by government hospitals. The expenditure for treatment for HIV AIDS and haemophilia patients is borne by public expenditure.

There are public health facilities that provide them free healthcare, he said. The list of 76 medicines also contains pharmaseutical ingredients used in drugs. A notification issued by Central Board of Excise and Customs last week had withdrawn the customs duty exemption on the import of 76 drugs.

They are used in treatment of diseases like kidney stones, heart rhythm disorders, diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, bone diseases, bacterial infections, anaesthetic medication, allergies, arthritis, lupus, menopause, glaucoma, poisoning by a chemical or pesticide, growth failure in children and ulcerative colitis.