Data released by the Uttar Pradesh government suggests that over half of UP’s COVID-19 patients are between the age group 21 and 40. With 7,884 cases, this age group comprises 51.93 per cent of all cases in the state. The state’s recovery rate at 60.85 per cent is substantially higher than the all-India average of 52.95 per cent.

Expatriates who wish to return to Kerala will now have to undergo mandatory COVID-19 tests for the highly contagious coronavirus before boarding a flight to the state, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said on Wednesday.

Maharashtra has the highest coronavirus cases in the country. It reported 3,307 cases on Wednesday, taking the state’s tally of infections to 1,16,752. The number of deaths in the state reached 5,651 with 114 fatalities in the 24 hours till Wednesday, government data shows.

A police inspector in Chennai became the first person in the force to die of COVID-19 in Tamil Nadu. He contracted the virus in early June and was moved to a coronavirus care centre on the IIT-Madras campus after he showed improvement. However, his condition deteriorated and he was moved to Rajiv Gandhi Government Medical College Hospital in Chennai, where he died on Wednesday.

Delhi on Wednesday saw the highest single-day spike of 2,414 COVID-19 cases, which took the total count to 47,102, the Delhi government said in a bulletin. “With 2,414 COVID-19 cases on Wednesday, the total number of cases in the national capital had reached 47,102, including 27,741 active cases,” the government said in the bulletin. 67 deaths were recorded on Wednesday, taking the total number of deaths to 1,904.

Beijing-backed Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank or AIIB has approved a loan of $750 million to help India battle the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on vulnerable households, the bank said on Wednesday, news agency Reuters reported.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday asked chief ministers to raise awareness about the number of patients who have recovered from coronavirus infection to get people out of “stigma due to fear of getting infected.”

“We should form a team of senior doctors to guide patients via telemedicine and to provide them with the right information. Apart from this, we also have to raise an army of young volunteers who can run the helpline effectively for the public,” PM Modi said in a video interaction with chief ministers.

It is important to reserve use of the steroid dexamethasone for the treatment only of serious cases of COVID-19, for which it has been shown to have a benefit, the head of the World Health Organisation’s emergencies programme said on Wednesday.

Giving low doses of the generic steroid drug dexamethasone to patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19 reduced death rates by around a third among those with the most severe cases of infection, trial data showed on Tuesday.