World
US general: Afghan forces could face ‘bad possible outcomes’
Afghan government forces face an uncertain future and, in a worst-case scenario, some “bad possible outcomes” against Taliban insurgents as the withdrawal of American and coalition troops accelerates in the coming weeks, the top U.S. military officer said Sunday.
Gen. Mark Milley described the Afghan military and police as “reasonably well equipped, reasonably well trained, reasonably well led.” He cited Afghan troops’ years of experience against a resilient insurgency, but he declined to say they are fully ready to stand up to the Taliban without direct international backing during a potential Taliban offensive.
Read Also: Formal start of final phase of Afghan pullout by US, NATO
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a veteran of the war in Afghanistan, spoke in an interview with Associated Press and CNN reporters flying with him from Hawaii to Washington just hours after the formal kickoff of the withdrawal.
Asked whether he believes the Afghan forces can hold up under increased strain, Milley was noncommittal.
“Your question: The Afghan army, do they stay together and remain a cohesive fighting force or do they fall apart? I think there’s a range of scenarios here, a range of outcomes, a range of possibilities,” he said. “On the one hand you get some really dramatic, bad possible outcomes. On the other hand, you get a military that stays together and a government that stays together.”
“Which one of these options obtains and becomes reality at the end of the day? We frankly don’t know yet. We have to wait and see how things develop over the summer.”
He said there is “at least still the possibility” of a negotiated political settlement between the government in Kabul and the Taliban. This, he said, would avoid the “massive civil war” that some fear could happen.
Read Also: Counting the costs of Americas 20-year war in Afghanistan
Within about two months of the U.S.-led invasion in October 2001, the country’s Taliban rulers were removed from power and militarily defeated. But within several years, they had regrouped, rearmed and reasserted themselves, taking advantage of sanctuary in neighboring Pakistan. In recent years the Taliban achieved a battlefield stalemate with U.S.-supported Afghan government forces.
Milley noted that the Afghan military has operated in recent years with less reliance on U.S. and coalition advisers. Among the key exceptions are special operations commandos and the defense ministry.
“But for the most part, there’s no advisers out there anyway,” he said in one of his few interviews since President Joe Biden announced April 14 that all U.S. military personnel will withdraw this summer. Milley said the commonly cited total of 2,500 troops rises to 3,300 if special operations forces are counted. “We’re taking it down to zero,” he said.
After the withdrawal is over, the United States will provide unspecified “capabilities” to the Afghan military from other locations, Milley said. He did not elaborate on this, but other officials have said those “over-the-horizon” arrangements for supporting the Afghan military have yet to be solidified.
Read Also: Islamic State degraded in Afghanistan but still poses threat
Milley said it is possible that the withdrawal will be finished before the Sept. 11 target date announced by the White House. He said that date reflects the estimated maximum amount of time needed to move all U.S. and coalition troops, as well as large amounts of equipment, out of the country.
“I don’t want to put precise dates on it,” he said.
3 killed, 27 hospitalized after boat capsizes off San Diego
Three people were killed and more than two dozen others were hospitalized Sunday after a boat capsized and broke apart in rough water just off the San Diego coast during a suspected human smuggling operation, authorities said.
Lifeguards, the U.S. Coast Guard and other agencies responded around 10 a.m. following reports of an overturned vessel in the waves near the rugged peninsula of Point Loma, according to the San Diego Fire-Rescue Department.
The original call was for a handful of people overboard but as rescuers arrived in boats and jet skis they quickly realized “it was going to be a bigger situation with more people,” said San Diego Lifeguard Services Lt. Rick Romero.
Read Also: Search for 9 missing from capsized boat in Gulf on 6th day
“There are people in the water, drowning, getting sucked out the rip current there,” he said.
Seven people were pulled from the waves, including three who drowned, said Romero. One person was rescued from a cliff and 22 others managed to make it to shore on their own, he said.
“Once we arrived on scene, the boat had basically been broken apart,” Romero said. “Conditions were pretty rough: 5 to 6 feet of surf, windy, cold.”
A total of 27 people were transported to hospitals with “a wide variety of injuries” including hypothermia, Romero said. Most of the victims were able to walk themselves to ambulances, he said.
Officials said the group was overcrowded on a 40-foot (12-meter) cabin cruiser that is larger than the typical open-top wooden panga-style boats often used by smugglers to bring people illegally into the U.S. from Mexico.
“Every indication from our perspective was this was a smuggling vessel. We haven’t confirmed their nationality,” said Jeff Stephenson, a supervising agent with U.S. Border Patrol.
Agents were at hospitals preparing to interview survivors, including the boat’s captain who Stephenson described as a “suspected smuggler.” Smugglers typically face federal charges and those being smuggled are usually deported.
Officials said smugglers sometimes use larger more conventional boats to try and blend in with regular maritime traffic.
Read Also: Why are so many babies dying of Covid-19 in Brazil?
San Diego Fire-Rescue Department spokesman Jose Ysea said when he arrived on scene near the Cabrillo National Monument there was a “large debris field” of splintered wood and other items in the choppy waters.
“In that area of Point Loma it’s very rocky. It’s likely the waves just kept pounding the boat, breaking it apart,” he said.
There were life preservers on board, but it wasn’t known how many or whether any passengers were wearing them, officials said.
Among the rescuers was an unnamed Navy sailor who was in the area with his family and jumped in the water to assist someone in an effort described by Romero as a “huge help.”
Officials believed everyone on board was accounted for right away, but crews in boats and aircraft continued to search the area for several hours for other possible survivors, Ysea said.
On Thursday, border officials intercepted a panga-type vessel traveling without navigation lights 11 miles (18 kilometers) off the coast of Point Loma with 21 people on board. The crew took all 15 men and six women into custody. Agents determined all were Mexican citizens with no legal status to enter the U.S., according to a statement released by Customs and Border Protection. Two of the people on the boat, the suspected smugglers, will face charges, it said.
Read Also: Charter bus rollover kills 3, injures 18 outside San Diego
Border Patrol on Friday said law enforcement officials would be ramping up operations to disrupt maritime smuggling off the coast of San Diego this weekend.
As warmer weather comes to San Diego, there is a misperception that it will make illegal crossings safer or easier, the agency said in a statement.
In early March, an SUV packed with migrants collided with a tractor-trailer in the farming community of Holtville, California, about 125 miles (200 kilometers) east of San Diego. The crash killed 13 of 25 people inside 1997 Ford Expedition, including the driver, in one of the deadliest border-related crashes in U.S. history.
BJP Office set on fire in India’s West Bengal, party blames Trinamool
The BJP party office in Kolkata’s Arambagh was set ablaze on Sunday evening as the Trinamool Congress inched towards a huge victory in the assembly elections reported NDTV.
The incident has reopened allegations of violence by the ruling party of the country.
The BJP leaders and workers tweeted the video, alleging that Trinamool, the opposition party, has unleashed violence on their workers elsewhere as well.
Chief Minister of West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee, however, said it was the BJP workers who chased her party's Arambagh candidate Sujata Mondal and hit her on the head near polling booth.
Cellphone recorded videos from Arambag -- a town in Hooghly district 80-odd kilometres from Kolkata -- showed a fire raging through a temporary structure.
Also read: Bucking anti-incumbency, Mamata scores a hat-trick in Bengal
"After results for West Bengal assembly came in, TMC goons burnt down BJP's party office in Arambagh... Is this what Bengal will have to suffer for the next 5 years?" tweeted the BJP's IT cell chief Amit Malviya.
"TMC cadres didn't stop at burning BJP's party offices, they set our booth agent's house in Bishnupur also on fire..." read a second tweet.
The Trinamool is leading in more than 210 seats in the recently concluded assembly election. The BJP, which was targeting 200 seats is leading in 70-plus seats.
The BJP has been vocal about violence in the state over the last two years. The Election Commission said they factored in the security angle while charting the schedule for the elections.
Violence in the run-up to the polls has been followed by the two parties blaming each other.
Asian Americans see generational split on confronting racism
The fatal shootings of eight people — six of them women of Asian descent — at Georgia massage businesses in March propelled Claire Xu into action.
Within days, she helped organize a rally condemning violence against Asian Americans that drew support from a broad group of activists, elected officials and community members. But her parents objected.
“‘We don’t want you to do this,’” Xu, 31, recalled their telling her afterward. ”‘You can write about stuff, but don’t get your face out there.’”
The shootings and other recent attacks on Asian Americans have exposed a generational divide in the community. Many young activists say their parents and other elders are saddened by the violence but question the value of protests or worry about their consequences. They’ve also found the older generations tend to identify more closely with their ethnic groups — Chinese or Vietnamese, for example — and appear reluctant to acknowledge racism.
That divide makes it harder to forge a collective Asian American constituency that can wield political power and draw attention to the wave of assaults against people of Asian descent in the U.S. since the coronavirus pandemic began, community leaders say.
“In our original countries, where our ancestors came from, they wouldn’t even imagine that someone from Bangladesh would be lumped in the same group as someone from Laos,” said Angela Hsu, president of the Georgia Asian Pacific American Bar Association.
But those differences obscure a shared experience of “feeling like we’re constantly thought of as being foreign in our own country,” said U.S. Rep. Andy Kim, of New Jersey.
Much of the recent violence against Asian Americans has targeted the elderly, and some seniors have attended rallies to condemn it. But Cora McDonnell, 79, said she did not want to speak out, though she is now scared to walk to the church blocks from her Seattle home.
She emigrated to the U.S. from the Philippines in 1985 and said her culture was “more respectful.”
“You talk maybe in your family, but not really publicly,” she said. “You don’t really blurt out things.”
Lani Wong, 73, said she understood that feeling, though she does not adhere to it.
“Just don’t stir the pot, don’t get involved,” said Wong, chairwoman of the National Association of Chinese Americans. “I think that was the mentality of the older generation.”
Some young Asian Americans said they were frustrated by family members’ reactions to the shootings.
E. Lim said it was “infuriating and really sad” to hear her parents cast aspersions on the massage work done by some of the Georgia shooting victims.
“It’s almost like this desperation for denial so that they don’t have to recognize that there is a world that hates them,” said Lim, organizing and civic engagement director for Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta.
A pastor in the Atlanta area, Tae Chin, said his Korean mother-in-law also questioned the victims’ line of work while urging him not to focus on race. Four of the slain women were of Korean descent.
“‘Just work hard. Just live. Just be a good person, and they’ll see someday,’” Chin, 41, recalled her saying on a phone call after the March 16 attack. “I’m like, ‘That’s why we have this problem to begin with, because that’s exactly what we do.’”
Allison Wang’s parents were similarly inclined and thought she was wasting her time protesting the shootings.
“I think they believe that it’s more important to focus on your career and family and don’t really feel like we can make a difference,” said Wang, who helped Xu put together the rally in downtown Atlanta.
For Raymond Tran’s family, the political history of one of their home countries played a role in opposing his involvement in any organizations. The attorney raised in Los Angeles said that when he was growing up, his parents told him about an uncle imprisoned and tortured by Vietnamese communists after joining a student group.
Racist polices in the U.S. strictly limited immigrants from Asia until the 1960s, so many Asian families have been in the country for only a generation or two. It’s not unusual for new immigrants to focus on providing for their families, avoiding attention in favor of assimilation.
Asian immigrants face the added burden of the “model minority” stereotype that portrays them as industrious, law-abiding and uncomplaining, and ascribes their achievements to those traits, historians and advocates say.
“It divides generations,” said Maki Hsieh, CEO of the Asian Hall of Fame, a program that honors Asian leaders. “It divides Asians from each other, and ultimately it divides them from other groups.”
Xu said her parents worried about her safety, but she thinks their objections to her activism also stemmed in part from a desire to avoid trouble. They understood the need to speak out against anti-Asian violence but didn’t want her to do it, she said.
“I wholeheartedly believe if this is the way everybody thinks, then there won’t be any progress,” she said.
The younger generation is also coming of age during a period of renewed racial awareness — reflected in last year’s Black Lives Matter protests — that makes it impossible for Asians in the U.S. to “fly under the racial radar anymore,” said Nitasha Tamar Sharma, director of the Asian American Studies program at Northwestern University.
In addition to holding rallies and vigils across the country in the wake of the Georgia shootings, young organizers have shared stories of racist encounters and used the hashtag #StopAsianHate to raise awareness about the dangers Asian Americans face.
“In America, we are all one,” said Hsu, the bar association president. “We are viewed in a similar way.”
Bucking anti-incumbency, Mamata scores a hat-trick in Bengal
Indian state of West Bengal's firebrand Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, affectionately called 'Didi', scripted history on Sunday by single handedly pulling off a landslide victory in the assembly election, bucking anti-incumbency and staving off a massive challenge from Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.
Though the Trinamool Congress swept back to power with a resounding majority of well over 210 seats in the 292-member assembly and Mamata secured a third five-year term in office, the 66-year-old lost her own seat in Nandigram to her former protege-turned-BJP's star campaigner Suvendu Adhikari by a thin margin of around 2,000 votes.
The BJP though has made major gains in Bengal, winning some 80 seats. In 2016, the saffron outfit had just three legislators in the state. In fact, it is now the main opposition party in the state as the Left Front, a coalition of Communist parties, has been decimated by the Trinamool Congress. The Left Front ruled Bengal for 34 years -- from 1977 to 2011.
Addressing the media in state capital Kolkata in the evening, Mamata hailed her party's astounding success at the assembly polls as a "victory for Bengal".
"Khela hobe (game) did happen, and we did win. The BJP kept going on and on about double-engine sarkar (government), while I assured you all that I will score a double century. This is Bangla's win... this is Bengal's win... this is your win. This win has saved Bengal, it has saved the culture and tradition of Bengal," she said.
Though Mamata conceded defeat to Adhikari in Nandigram -- the potboiler of the assembly election in Bengal -- the Trinamool supremo said she would challenge the result in a court of law. "Don't worry for Nandigram, for struggle you have to sacrifice something. Let the people of Nandigram give whatever verdict they want, I accept that," she said.
Just an hour before her press meet, Mamata addressed her party workers outside her residence in south Kolkata and urged them not to indulge in any victory celebrations. "Covid is going on. Please follow all Covid protocols and don't put your lives at risk," she said.
Political leaders cutting across party lines, including Prime Minister Modi, took to social media to congratulate the three-time Bengal Chief Minister on her "historic win".
"Congratulations to Mamata Didi for @AITCofficial's win in West Bengal. The Centre (federal government) will continue to extend all possible support to the West Bengal Government to fulfil people’s aspirations and also to overcome the Covid-19 pandemic," Modi tweeted.
Top BJP leader and Indian Defence Minister Rajnath Singh also congratulated Mamata."Congratulations to the Chief Minister of West Bengal, @MamataOfficial Didi on her party’s victory in West Bengal assembly elections. My best wishes to her for her next tenure."
Former Chief Minister of the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh and head of regional Samajwadi Party, Akhilesh Yadav also hailed Mamata's win. "Hearty congratulations to the conscious public, the combative Ms Mamta Banerjee ji and the dedicated leaders and activists of TMC, who defeated the politics of hate of BJP in Bengal!" he tweeted.
In fact, West Bengal witnessed the most high-profile contest in India's recently held state elections. While Mamata harped on being Bengal’s daughter, the BJP asked people to vote for "change and socio-economic development" after nearly 50 years of Communist and Trinamool Congress rule.
"It was BJP's star power versus Trinamool's one-woman army. From Modi to Indian Home Minister Amit Shah, the entire top leadership of BJP campaigned in Bengal. But none failed to unseat Didi. She came back again, this time with a bigger mandate," Prof Suneeta Roy, a political pundit, told UNB over the phone from Kolkata.
Though it was a huge setback for the BJP, particularly the Modi-Shah juggernaut, the country's ruling party managed to retain power in the neighbouring northeastern state of Assam -- defying all odds and defeating the country's main opposition Congress party, which tried its best to reclaim its erstwhile citadel.
"People have blessed us. We can say for sure that the BJP will form government in Assam. We are coming back to power with our partners," Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal said.
The BJP also won the assembly election in the Union Territory of Puducherry in southern India, but failed to retain power in the neighbouring state of Tamil Nadu, along with its bigger coalition partner AIADMK. In Tamil Nadu, the DMK swept to power in the 243-member assembly after being in the opposition for a decade.
It was also a big disappointment for the BJP as well as the Congress in the southern state of Kerala, where the Left Democratic Front (LDF) government, led by Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, won a historic second term for the first time in 40 years. Kerala is known to vote out incumbents every five years.
Elections to the four states and one Union Territory took place in March and April, just as India started witnessing a ferocious second wave of Covid-19. On Sunday too, India registered close to four lakh cases and nearly 3,700 deaths in a span of 24 hours. The country has been reporting over three lakh daily infections for the last 10 days.
Why India’s pandemic data is vastly undercounted
Even after more than a year of devastating coronavirus surges across the world, the intensity and scale of India’s current crisis stands out, with patients desperate for short supplies of oxygen, pleas for help from overwhelmed hospitals, and images of body bags and funeral pyres.
As daily case counts soar far beyond what other countries have reported, experts caution the official COVID-19 numbers from the world’s second most populous country are likely a massive undercount. But why is India’s data considered inaccurate? Is the data any less accurate than what other nations report? And which numbers give a good indication of the crisis?
IS INDIA COUNTING EVERY CASE?
India is not counting every coronavirus case, but no nation can. Around the world, official tallies generally report only confirmed cases, not actual infections. Cases are missed because testing is so haphazard and because some people infected by the coronavirus experience mild or even no symptoms.
The more limited the testing, the more cases are being missed. The World Health Organization says countries should be doing 10 to 30 tests per confirmed case.
India is doing about five tests for every confirmed case, according to Our World in Data, an online research site. The U.S. is doing 17 tests per confirmed case. Finland is doing 57 tests per confirmed case.
“There are still lots of people who are not getting tested,” said Dr. Prabhat Jha of the University of Toronto. “Entire houses are infected. If one person gets tested in the house and reports they’re positive and everyone else in the house starts having symptoms, it’s obvious they have COVID, so why get tested?”
Jha estimates, based on modeling from a previous surge in India, that the true infection numbers could be 10 times higher than the official reports.
WHAT ABOUT DEATHS?
Deaths are a better indicator of the shape of the pandemic curve, Jha said, but there are problems with the data here too.
“The biggest gap is what’s going on in rural India,” Jha said. In the countryside, people often die at home without medical attention, and these deaths are vastly underreported. Families bury or cremate their loved ones themselves without any official record. Seventy percent of the nation’s deaths from all causes occur in rural India in any given year.
Counting rural deaths can be done, as Jha’s work with the Million Death Study has shown. The pre-pandemic project used in-person surveys to count deaths in rural India, capturing details of symptoms and circumstances with results of the “ verbal autopsies ” reviewed and recorded by doctors.
Many low- and middle-income countries have similar undercounts of death data, Jha said, but India could do better.
“It’s a country that’s got a space program. Just counting the dead is a basic function,” he said. “India should be doing much, much better.”
DOES IT MATTER?
Knowing the size and scope of the outbreak and how it is changing helps governments and health officials plan their responses.
Even with the known problems with the data, the trajectory of COVID-19 cases and deaths in India is an alarming reminder of how the virus can rocket through a largely unvaccinated population when precautions are lifted.
“What happens in India matters to the entire world,” said Dr. Amita Gupta, chair of the Johns Hopkins India Institute in a Facebook conversation Thursday. “We care from a humanitarian perspective, a public health perspective, and a health security perspective.”
Bangladeshi man stabbed to death in Malaysia
A Bangladeshi man died while two others were injured after being stabbed with a screwdriver in a brawl with fellow countrymen at a workers' dormitory in Mahkota Industrial Park, Banting last Friday.
Kuala Langat district police chief Superimendant Azizan Tukiman said the victim identified as Babu, 44, died at the scene after he was stabbed in the chest believed to have hit his heart, while his two friends sustained injuries in their stomach, in an incident at about 9 pm.
'The fight involved five Bangladeshi men. The two suspects Red the scene after stabbing the victims: he said in a statement today.
He said a police investigation found that the deceased and the suspects were among 30 foreign workers of a paper mill who tested positive for COVID-19 and were undergoing quarantine at a location not far from the dormitory.
Azizan said the investigation also found that the brawl had started after the suspects had removed the victim's belonging from the dormitory without his consent
'Following the brawl, the suspect who had lost control took a screwdriver and stabbed the victin before stabbing his friends using the same weapon,' he said.
Azizan said both suspects, aged 42 and 4t who were hiding at the Taman Mans Jaya junction, were arrested at 3.30 am yesterday.
'Both of them admitted to having a fight with the victim and nabbed him with a screwdriver; he said.
SpaceX capsule departs station with 4 astronauts, heads home
A SpaceX capsule carrying four astronauts departed the International Space Station late Saturday, aiming for a rare nighttime splashdown to end the company’s second crew flight.
It would be the first U.S. splashdown in darkness since Apollo 8′s crew returned from the moon in 1968.
NASA’s Mike Hopkins, Victor Glover and Shannon Walker, and Japan’s Soichi Noguchi, headed home in the same Dragon capsule that delivered them to the space station last November. The ride back was expected to take just 6 1/2 hours.
Read Also: China launches main part of its 1st permanent space station
“Thanks for your hospitality,” Hopkins radioed as the capsule undocked 260 miles (420 kilometers) above Mali.
SpaceX targeted a splashdown around 3 a.m. Sunday in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Panama City, Florida. Despite the early hour, the Coast Guard deployed extra patrols — and spotlights — to keep any night-owl sightseers away. The capsule of the first SpaceX crew was surrounded by pleasure boaters last summer, posing a safety risk.
Hopkins, the spacecraft commander, rocketed into orbit with his crew on Nov. 15 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Their replacements arrived a week ago aboard their own Dragon capsule — the same one that launched SpaceX’s first crew last spring.
The four should have been back by now, but high offshore wind kept them at the space station a few extra days. SpaceX and NASA determined the best weather would be before dawn.
The delays allowed Glover to celebrate his 45th birthday in space Friday.
Read Also: Biggest space station crowd in decade after SpaceX arrival
“Gratitude, wonder, connection. I’m full of and motivated by these feelings on my birthday, as my first mission to space comes to an end,” Glover tweeted.
Saturday night’s undocking left seven astronauts at the space station: three Americans, two Russians, one Japanese and one French.
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Indian court urges government action as hospitals cry help
With Indian hospitals struggling to secure a steady supply of oxygen, and more COVID-19 patients dying amid the shortages, a court in New Delhi said it would start punishing government officials for failing to deliver the life-saving items.
On Sunday, India recorded a slight drop in new infections with 392,488 from a high of 401,993 in the previous 24 hours. It also reported 3,689 additional deaths, bringing the total to 215,542. Experts believe both figures are an undercount.
Read also: India reports over 390,000 new COVID-19 cases, tally over 19.5 million
The government has been using the railroad, the air force and the navy to rush oxygen tankers to worst-hit areas where overwhelmed hospitals are unable to cope with an unprecedented surge in patients gasping for air.
Twelve COVID-19 patients, including a doctor, on high-flow oxygen, died Saturday at a hospital in New Delhi after it ran out of the supply for 80 minutes, said S.C.L. Gupta, director of Batra Hospital.
The Times of India newspaper reported another 16 deaths in two hospitals in southern Andhra Pradesh state, and six in a Gurgaon hospital on the outskirts of New Delhi because of the oxygen shortage.
With the government unable to maintain a steady supply of oxygen, several hospital authorities sought a court intervention in the Indian capital where a lockdown has been extended by a week to contain the wave of infections.
Read Also: India launches effort to inoculate all adults against COVID
“Water has gone above the head. Enough is Enough,” said New Delhi High Court, adding it would start punishing government officials if supplies of oxygen allocated to hospitals were not delivered.
“We can’t have people dying,” said Justices Vipin Sanghi and Rekha Patil.
The court said it would start contempt proceedings.
New Delhi recorded 412 deaths in the past 24 hours, the highest since the pandemic started.
The army opened its hospitals to civilians in a desperate bid to control the massive humanitarian crisis. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government also gave emergency financial powers to the army set up new quarantine facilities and hospitals and buy equipment.
The military also called up 600 doctors who had retired in the past few years. The navy deployed 200 nursing assistants in civilian hospitals, a government statement said.
On Saturday, India said all adults 18 and over could get shots. Since January, nearly 10% of Indians have received one dose, but only around 1.5% have received both, although the country is one of the world’s biggest producers of vaccines.
Read Also: India's COVID-19 tally crosses 19 mln with over 400000 daily cases
India has so far given more than 156 million vaccine doses. Some states have already said they don’t have enough for everyone, and even the ongoing effort to inoculate people above 45 is sputtering.
The United States, Britain, Germany and several other nations are rushing therapeutics, rapid virus tests and oxygen to India, along with some materials needed for India to boost its domestic production of COVID-19 vaccines.
India reports over 390,000 new COVID-19 cases, tally over 19.5 million
India's COVID-19 tally reached 19,557,457 on Sunday, with a single day spike of 392,488 cases, said the federal health ministry.
As many as 3,689 deaths were recorded since Saturday morning, taking the total death toll to 215,542.
Read Also: India launches effort to inoculate all adults against COVID
There are a total of 3,349,644 active cases in the country, with an increase of 80,934 through Saturday, while 15,992,271 people have been cured and discharged from hospitals so far across the country.
The COVID-19 figures continue to peak in the country, but the federal government has ruled out imposing a complete lockdown. The capital Delhi has been put under a second successive week-long lockdown till May 3.
Read Also: India's COVID-19 tally crosses 19 mln with over 400000 daily cases
Delhi, one of the most COVID-19 affected places in the country, witnessed over 25,219 new cases and 412 deaths through Saturday. As many as 16,559 people have died in the national capital due to COVID-19, confirmed Delhi's health department.
Meanwhile, a total 290,142,339 COVID-19 tests have been conducted in India till Saturday, out of which 1,804,954 tests were conducted on Saturday alone, according to the latest data issued by the Indian Council of Medical Research on Sunday.
The third phase of vaccination for people aged above 18 in India began on Saturday. So far over 156 million vaccination doses have been administered in India since the country kicked off its nationwide inoculation drive in January.
Read Also: First batch of Russia's Sputnik V vaccine delivered to India
Two types of vaccines are being administered to the people in India, including the Covishield vaccine made by the Serum Institute of India and the Covaxin vaccine made by Bharat Biotech International Limited.
India received the first batch of the Russian-made Sputnik-V vaccine on Saturday.