As the vaccines reached Brazil early on Saturday, External Affairs Minister Jaishankar said, “Made in India vaccines arrive in Brazil.”

Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro thanked PM Narendra Modi for the vaccines and said, “Namaskar, Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Brazil feels honoured to have a great partner to overcome a global obstacle by joining efforts. Thank you for assisting us with the vaccine exports from India to Brazil. Dhanyavaad.”

To this, PM Modi replied, “The honour is ours, President Jair M. Bolsonaro to be a trusted partner of Brazil in fighting the Covid-19 pandemic together. We will continue to strengthen our cooperation on healthcare.”

Bolsonaro referred to the Covid-19 vaccine from India as ‘sanjeevni booti’ from Ramayana.

The Indian ambassador to Brazil said, “Today is a historic day in India-Brazil relations. Brazil is the first country to get such a consignment. PM Modi said we’ll make vaccine available to all countries and we’ll continue to work towards that and I wish you good luck in your efforts.”

Two flights, each carrying 2 million doses of Covishield vaccine, departed from the Mumbai airport for Brazil and Morocco in the early hours of Friday.

India is one of the world’s biggest drugmakers, and an increasing number of countries have already approached it for procuring coronavirus vaccines.

Since Wednesday, India has begun sending Covid-19 vaccines under grant assistance to Bhutan, the Maldives, Bangladesh, Nepal, Myanmar and Seychelles.

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Set up in 2014, V-Dem is an independent research institute based at the University of Gothenburg, and has published a data-heavy worldwide democracy report each year since 2017. As the name suggests, these reports look at the status of democracies in countries around the world. The institute calls itself the world’s largest data collection project on democracy.

The 2020 report titled ‘Autocratisation Surges – Resistance Grows’, begins with figures that point to the fact that globally, the spirit of democracy is on the decline.

For the first time since 2001, autocracies are in the majority and comprise 92 countries that are home to 54% of the global population, said the report.

It says that major G20 nations and all regions of the world are now part of the “third wave of autocratisation” which is affecting major economies with sizeable populations, like India, Brazil, the US and Turkey. “India has continued on a path of steep decline, to the extent it has almost lost its status as a democracy,” the preface to the report mentions.

India, the report finds, is the largest country verging towards a system of autocracy in terms of population.

Attacks on freedom of expression and media freedom are now affecting 31 countries. Two years ago it was just 19 countries. Moreover, academic freedom has registered an average decline of 13% in autocratising (including India) countries over the last 10 years. The right to peaceful assembly and protest has declined by 14% on average in such countries.

According to the report the first step of autocratisation involve eliminating media freedom and curtailing civil society.

The report cites “…the dive in press freedom along with increasing repression of civil society in India associated with the current Hindu-nationalist regime of Prime Minister Narendra Modi” to illustrate this.

India is not on the top 10 regressing countries according and is still considered as an electoral democracy. But the report warns that the signs of deterioration are evident.

This is not the first time India’s democracy has been under scrutiny by an international watch dog. Earlier in the 2019 Democracy index released this January, India slipped to the 51st position , and was categorised under flawed democracies .

Flawed democracy is defined as countries that hold free and fair elections and where basic civil liberties are respected, but have significantly weak governance, an underdeveloped political culture and low levels of political participation. The report was prepared by the intelligence unit of The Economist Group.

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Now the country’s total coronavirus case stands at 51,18,253.

COVID-19 Testing Update. For more details visit: https://t.co/dI1pqwfbRz @MoHFW_INDIA @DeptHealthRes #ICMRFIGHTSCOVID19 #IndiaFightsCOVID19 #CoronaUpdatesInIndia #COVID19 pic.twitter.com/joQaGm2E7R

— ICMR (@ICMRDELHI) September 17, 2020

According to Union health ministry update on Thursday morning, the number of active cases crossed the million mark and currently stand at 10,09,976 whereas 40,25,079 patients have been discharged from hospitals.

The recovery rate has further improved to 78.53 per cent, the health ministry said.
It further said that nearly 59 per cent of the new recoveries came from five states – 23.41 per cent from Maharashtra (19,423 recoveries); and a cumulative 35.5 per cent from Andhra Pradesh (9,628 recoveries), Karnataka (7,406), Uttar Pradesh (6,680) and Tamil Nadu (5,735).

Twenty-seven states and union territories are reporting recovery rates of more than 70 per cent, the ministry highlighted.

Meanwhile, Pune-based Serum Institute of India (SII) on Wednesday received the approval from the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) to resume clinical trials for the Covid-19 vaccine candidate developed by United Kingdom’s Oxford University and AstraZeneca.

The trials in India were paused last week after a trial subject in the United Kingdom developed an unexplained severe adverse reaction.

On September 16, the Supreme Court said that the central government has approved the use of Remdesivir and Fabiparivir as medicines to treat the coronavirus disease.

The top court was hearing a plea by the CBI against ten Indian pharmaceutical firms for manufacturing and selling these two medicines to treat the coronavirus disease.

Globally, nearly 30 million people have been infected with as many as 939,427 fatalities. The United States continued to the worst affected followed by India and Brazil. India, however, remained on top of the recoveries chart.

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It was around ten months back that the novel coronavirus apparently originated in a seafood market in Wuhan, China. Soon, the pandemic spread like wildfire in all nooks of the world, and it literally made the world shut down for several months. Now, India, the world’s second most populated country has overtaken Brazil in the coronavirus chaos chart, and the country is just behind the United States in terms of total confirmed cases.

According to the latest statistics, India has now more than 4.2 million confirmed cases, and the death toll has already crossed 71,000, the third-highest in the world. In the past 24 hours alone, India has recorded more than 90,000 positive cases, and this gradual surge in the patient count is literally alarming health experts in the country.

The rise in cases is happening mainly due to the lifting of coronavirus lockdown measures in the country. In India, more than 60% of the active cases are coming from the states of Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Maharashtra, and Uttar Pradesh.

Coronavirus cases are also increasing in states like Kerala, and on Sunday alone, more than 3,000 positive cases were reported in the Southern state. It should be noted that the state is recording more than 3,000 positive cases for the first time since the day of the outbreak.

In the initial days of the outbreak, most of the coronavirus cases in the country were primarily confined to the urban areas. But now, several cases are getting reported in the rural areas, and the recent trend indicates that the country may soon cross the 1 lakh positive cases mark per day.

As per the latest figures, there are more than 27 million positive cases worldwide, and the total number of death cases has surpassed 8,87,000. The United States continues to top the coronavirus chaos chart with more than 6.4 million positive cases and 1,93,000 deaths.

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Pidlit Industries is a manufacturer of a wide range of products, including fevicol, paint chemicals, and industrial polymers. Pidlit Industries’ well-known brands that focus on quality and innovative products are Fevicol, Dr. Fixit,Cyclo, Hobby Ideas, Roff and M-Steel.

Pidlit Industries was established in 1959. At the time, the company had only one product, Fevicol. This product made the work of carpenters much easier and made it one of the most well-known brands in India.

Two-thirds of Pdlit’s products are sold for home improvement work. The company has three fully equipped R&D centers in India. There are also five research centres in Singapore, Thailand, Brazil, Dubai and the United States.

Fevicol, Feviquic, Mseel and Dr. Fixit have not only dominated the market but have also become synonymous with products in their respective sectors. Glue for wood is now known as Fevicol. Pidilite Industries’ business is likely to improve as construction activities pick up.

Pidlit Industries is one of the stocks that stands out among the mid-sized companies. This is a stock that investors can buy with a long-term goal. In the long run, these stocks have the potential to offer great returns to investors.

The performance of the company has stood out in the stock index over the years. The stock has gained 19.61 per cent year-on-year over the last three years. During the same period, the Sensex gained 6.47 per cent year-on-year. Pidlit Industries is an ideal stock for long-term investors.

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External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar urged full support of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) in reforming the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to reflect contemporary global realities and the feelings of millions of people in the world.

Thank FM Sergey Lavrov for convening the #BRICS Foreign Ministers’ Meeting today.

Positively assessed the progress made during the Russian Chair, especially in counter-terrorism, economic cooperation, ICTs and people-to-people contacts. pic.twitter.com/QOZMliC9tW

— Dr. S. Jaishankar (@DrSJaishankar) September 4, 2020

Mr Jaishankar made the comments during a virtual meeting of the BRICS Foreign Ministers convened by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on September 4.

India, Japan, Germany and Brazil (G4) are eyeing a permanent seat at the UNSC, which currently has only five veto-wielding powers- United States, Russia, Britain, France and China.

Jaishankar also called for reformed multilateralism including the restructuring of international bodies like the World Trade Organisation, International Monetary Fund, World Health Organisation.

The EAM thanked his Russian counterpart for convening the meeting and highlighted that in the wake of several challenges in economic, political and social/ health fields, BRICS has an important to play.

He also raised the issue of terrorism, in situation in Afganistan and West Asia, and called for enhanced BRICS operation in countering terror.

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With 1, 089 fresh deaths, the toll reached 69, 561. At present, India has 8,46,395 active cases and as many as 31,07,233 people have recovered pushing the recovery rate to 77.2 percent.

India has been reporting more than 80,000 cases perday for the last three days now. India is now the third country after US and Brazil to record 40 lakh cases.

The COVID-19 case fatality rate due to the novel coronavirus infection has further declined to 1.73 percent.

It took 110 days for the Covid-19 cases in India to reach one lakh while it had taken 59 days more to go past the 10-lakh post.

Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh are the five states which reported the highest number of cases in the last 24 hours. These five states account for over 62 per cent of the active cases, according to the Health Ministry.

15 districts across these states have been exhibiting higher active caseload, fatality rates and a surge in COVID cases for the past four weeks. The Centre has now asked them to curb chain of transmission and bring mortality rate below 1 per cent.

Maharashtra reported its highest single-day spike of 19,218 new cases on Friday. The number of COVID-19 cases in the state now stand at 8,63,062. The state government will launch a state-wide campaign to screen 2.25 crore families for possible COVID-19.

After a brief drop, Delhi has seen a rise in the number of COVID-19 cases over the last few days. The national capital on Friday reported 2,914 fresh infections, its highest one-day spike in 69 days. Delhi now has over 1.85 lakh cases, while the death count jumped to 4,513, authorities said.

Now India is just 70,000 cases behind Brazil, the world’s second worst affected nation after the United States. The South American country, which has reported 40,91,801 cases so far, has showing initial signs of decrease in the spread of virus.

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As the novel coronavirus that originated from Wuhan, China is continuing to spread chaos in all nooks of the globe, India is quickly climbing up the chart, and the country has recorded more than 15 lakh positive cases in August alone. According to the latest updates, India has more than 3.2 million positive cases, and the country stands on the third spot in the global chart just behind the United States and Brazil.

On Tuesday, 1,071 deaths were reported, the second-highest single-day figure recorded so far. It should be noted that fresh cases reported on August 25 zoomed past 66,000, and if it goes like this, India will soon overtake Brazil which has 3.6 million positive cases.

A total of 329 deaths were recorded in Maharashtra on August 25 alone, followed by Karnataka (149), Tamil Nadu (107), and Andhra Pradesh (92). However, the number of fresh cases in Maharashtra dipped from 11,000 to 10,425.

Kerala, the southern state of India which successfully flattened the curve at one point in time, is also facing the wrath of coronavirus since May. On Tuesday, the state recorded 2375 positive cases, the highest single-day spike. However, the state has somehow managed to control the fatality rate associated with COVID-19.

In the initial months of the outbreak, coronavirus cases in the country were primarily confined to the urban areas. However, over the past few months, coronavirus drastically affected people living in rural areas and suburbs, which played a crucial role in the surge in positive cases. Relaxation of lockdown measures in several states to reopen economies also negatively affected the strategies aimed to contain coronavirus spread in the nation.

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Meanwhile, the death toll due to the COVID disease rose to 774,288, with the US reporting the highest deaths in the world (170,052), followed by Brazil (107,852), Mexico (56,757), and India (50,921).

Globally, more than 13 million people have recovered from the infection (13,372,643), with the highest number of recovered in Brazil (2,655,017) and followed by India (1,919,842).

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on Monday decided to delay New Zealand’s national elections by four weeks as the country deals with a new coronavirus outbreak in its largest city, Auckland. The election had been scheduled for September 19 but will now be held on October 17. Under New Zealand law, Arden could delay election for two months.

South Korea, which efficiently controlled the virus outbreak, witnessed a triple-digit spike in new coronavirus cases, as fears grew about a massive outbreak in the greater capital region. The government urged people to stay home and curb travel.

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