In view of the prevailing COVID-19 situation, all centrally protected monuments, sites, and museums under the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) will be closed with immediate effect till May 15 or until further orders, said Union Minister of State for Culture & Tourism (I/C) Prahlad Singh Patel.
India's COVID-19 case load continues to set some horrifying records. For the first time since the pandemic began, the country recorded a single day case rise of more than 2 lakh. With this, the active case tally has now crossed 14.71 lakh.
As per the Union Health Ministry, in the last 24 hours, the country recorded 2,00,739 new cases, 93,528 discharges and 1,038 deaths. Maharashtra continues to lead the charts, with 613635 active cases as of Thursday morning. Chhattisgarh and Uttar Pradesh are a distant second and third, having recently crossed the one lakh active cases mark. On a daily basis, nearly all parts of the country are showing a progressive rise in cases.
At the same time, India's vaccination drive continues, with 11,44,93,238 vaccines having been administered as of today morning. Three states have administered more than 1 crore vaccinations, – Maharashtra (1,11,19,018), Rajasthan (1,02,15,471) and Uttar Pradesh (1,00,17,650). On day four of the ongoing Tika Utsav, more than 31.39 lakh vaccine doses were administered till 8 pm, taking the total vaccinations beyond the 11.43 crore mark.
