Coronavirus update: Delhi Metro resumes even as India keeps adding more than 90,000 cases a day

The Delhi Metro resumed its services in the national capital after nearly a six-month hiatus. The operations have been start in a phased manner: Yellow line, connecting Samaypur Badli and Huda City Centre in Gurugram as well as the rapid metro line, are the first two lines to be opened. The rest of the lines will be made opeartional by September 12. 

• India added 90,802 new cases of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in the last 24 hours. The tally has now breached the 42 lakh-mark. India had on September 5 overtaken Brazil with the second-largest number of people infected.
• Only the United States, with more than six million cases, is ahead of India in caseload.
• Russian research institute has submitted “comprehensive data” on the safety and efficacy of Sputnik V vaccine to Indian authorities, the Indian Express reported. As this “comprehensive data” is evaluated by experts, one option was to have a separate Phase III clinical trial after necessary approvals from regulators, it added.
• Kerala Finance Minister Thomas Isaac is among the politicians who tested positive for the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 September 6. 
• The world reported a total of 27,296,303 COVID-19 cases as of September 7. At least 887,599 have succumbed to the disease. 
• The number of currently infected people (active cases) worldwide is 7,029,206, out of which only one per cent (59,998) are in critical condition, according to worldometers. 
• People severely ill with COVID-19 are less likely to die if they are given drugs called corticosteroids than people who are not, according to an analysis of hospital patients on five continents, Nature reported. The team from the University of Bristol analysed participants’ status 28 days after they were randomly assigned to take either a steroid or a placebo. The risk of death was 32% for those who took a steroid and 40% for those who took a placebo. 
• Multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C), believed to be linked to COVID-19, damages the heart to such an extent that some children will need lifelong monitoring and interventions, according to a study published in EClinicalMedicine, a journal of The Lancet.
• “Children did not need to exhibit the classic upper respiratory symptoms of COVID-19 to develop MIS-C, which is frightening,” said Alvaro Moreira, one of the authors of the study. “Children might have no symptoms, no one knew they had the disease, and a few weeks later, they may develop this exaggerated inflammation in the body.”
• The World Health Organization (WHO) had last week said widespread vaccinations against COVID-19 were not expected to be available until the middle of 2021. None of the candidate vaccines in advanced clinical trials so far has demonstrated a clear signal of efficacy at the level of at least 50 per cent sought by the WHO, spokeswoman Margaret Harris said.
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