The government on Friday added collection, harvesting of minor forest produce, non-timber forest produce by Scheduled Tribes and other forest dwellers in the list of exempted activities diring the coronavirus lockdown.

The Ministry of Home Affairs added several items to the list of exempted activities in the consolidated guidelines for lockdown which was issued on Wednesday.

A medical college in Kerala's Thiruvananthapuram has developed a diagnostic test kit that can confirm COVID-19 in 2 hours at a low cost, Union Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan announced on Friday.

Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Sciences and Technology in Trivandrum is an Institute of National Importance of the Department of Science and Technology.

As the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) crisis exacerbates in India, the number of confirmed cases of coronavirus climbed to 13,387 on Friday with the death toll reaching 437.

At 8:30 AM in the morning, the 13,387 total coronavirus-positive cases in India included 11,201 active cases, 1,749 cured, discharged, or migrated patients and 437 deaths. In the last 24 hours, 1,007 new cases and 23 deaths were reported.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Friday came with another round of measures to ease a slowdown caused by the COVID-19, which includes discouraging banks from parking their excess liquidity with the central bank and mandating the lenders to buy debt papers of small and medium sized non-banking financial companies (NBFC).

In a streamed address to the media on Friday morning, RBI governor Shaktikanta Das said the measures are taken to ensure financial stability.

As the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic outbreak spreads like wildfire across the globe, the entire world is laying in anxious wait for a cure or a vaccine to combat the virus which has brought normal life to a standstill as almost the entirety of human race have been forced to go into self-isolation and home-quarantine as major cities remain in strict lockdown, all in fear of the virus.

The growth rate in new Covid-19 cases has shown a decline during the period of the lockdown, which started in the last week of March. This first phase of the lockdown ended on April 14. It has since been extended to May 3.

The five-day moving average rate in the growth of confirmed cases was in excess of 20 per cent every day in the period leading up to the lockdown in March. It has since dropped to under 12 per cent shows data as of April 16.

The global coronavirus deaths on Friday crossed the 1.4 lakh mark with the United States registering the highest death toll of over 34,000.

As of 8 AM Friday (IST), 144,047 deaths have been recorded with 2,157,108 global cases of COVID-19, John Hopkins University's coronavirus tracker showed.

In an attempt to contain misinformation on the coronavirus pandemic, social networking giant Facebook on Thursday stressed that it will soon start showing messages in News Feed to the people who have previously engaged with misinformation that has already been removed from the platform. They will also be shown the correct information, the company said.

In a Facebook post, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that the new feature, called Get The Facts, will debunk misinformation about the COVID-19 crisis.

As the whole country continues to be under complete lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic, the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) on Thursday released an alternative academic calendar so that educational activities can be carried out at home.

Announcing the calendar, Education Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’ said that it has been developed by the NCERT under the guidance of MHRD and is aimed at engaging students with assistance from their parents and teachers.

The Delhi High Court registry refused urgent listing of a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) that sought directions to schools in the national capital not to charge school fees from students for for a period from April 2020 till the school become operational.

The PIL was submitted before the court on Thursday, but the Registry refused to list the matter saying that there's no urgency.

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