NEW DELHI: India has registered its worst single-day increase in coronavirus cases since late December as the western state of Maharashtra battles a resurgence.
India’s health ministry on Friday reported 23,285 new cases of COVID-19 in the past 24 hours. It’s the highest daily rise since Dec. 24, according to government data.
India has so far reported more than 11.3 million cases of coronavirus infection, the world’s second-highest total after the United States. The cases had been falling steadily since a peak in late September, but experts say increased public gatherings and laxity toward public health guidance is leading to the latest surge.
The increase in new cases is being reported in six states, including Maharashtra, where authorities have announced a lockdown in densely populated Nagpur city. A weeklong complete lockdown will be implemented next week, officials said. The vaccine drive will, however, continue in the city.
Government health official Vinod Kumar Paul in a news conference Thursday said the latest surge, particularly in Maharashtra, was worrisome. He advised people not to lower their guard as “the pandemic is not yet over.”
India began its vaccination drive in January and has advanced to the second phase, giving shots to health care workers, people older than 60 and people over 45 with significant health risks.
But the program aiming to vaccinate 300 million people by August is running way below capacity.
More than 26 million people have gotten a shot, though only 4.72 million are fully vaccinated with both doses.
India has reported more than 158,000 deaths from COVID-19.
Coronavirus resurges as India slowly vaccinates more
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Coronavirus resurges as India slowly vaccinates more
- India has so far reported more than 11.3 million cases of coronavirus infection, the world’s second-highest total after the US
French publisher recalls dictionary over ‘Jewish settler’ reference
- The entry in French reads: “In October 2023, following the death of more than 1,200 Jewish settlers in a series of Hamas attacks”
- The four books are subject to a recall procedure and will be destroyed, Hachette said
PARSI: French publisher Hachette on Friday said it had recalled a dictionary that described the Israeli victims of the October 7, 2023 attacks as “Jewish settlers” and promised to review all its textbooks and educational materials.
The Larousse dictionary for 11- to 15-year-old students contained the same phrase as that discovered by an anti-racism body in three revision books, the company told AFP.
The entry in French reads: “In October 2023, following the death of more than 1,200 Jewish settlers in a series of Hamas attacks, Israel decided to tighten its economic blockade and invade a large part of the Gaza Strip, triggering a major humanitarian crisis in the region.”
The worst attack in Israeli history saw militants from the Palestinian Islamist group kill around 1,200 people in settlements close to the Gaza Strip and at a music festival.
“Jewish settlers” is a term used to describe Israelis living on illegally occupied Palestinian land.
The four books, which were immediately withdrawn from sale, are subject to a recall procedure and will be destroyed, Hachette said, promising a “thorough review of its textbooks, educational materials and dictionaries.”
France’s leading publishing group, which came under the control of the ultra-conservative Vincent Bollore at the end of 2023, has begun an internal inquiry “to determine how such an error was made.”
It promised to put in place “a new, strengthened verification process for all its future publications” in these series.
President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday said that it was “intolerable” that the revision books for the French school leavers’ exam, the baccalaureat, “falsify the facts” about the “terrorist and antisemitic attacks by Hamas.”
“Revisionism has no place in the Republic,” he wrote on X.
Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,221 people, with 251 people taken hostage, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Authorities in Gaza estimate that more than 70,000 people have been killed by Israeli forces during their bombardment of the territory since, while nearly 80 percent of buildings have been destroyed or damaged, according to UN data.
Israeli forces have killed at least 447 Palestinians in Gaza since a ceasefire took effect in October, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
