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COVID-19 death toll rises to 824, cases climb to 26,496: Health Ministry

The death toll increased by 45 and the number of cases has gone up by 1,554 since the ministry last updated its data on Saturday evening,
Prime Minister Narendra Modi exhorted people to shun complacency on the assumption that the pandemic will not affect them as it has so far not spread to areas they work or live in, saying “we have to continue being careful and taking the right precautions”. Addressing his monthly ‘Mann ki Baat’ programme, he also said that India’s fight against the novel coronavirus has become people-driven wherein every citizen is playing his or her part

Indian govt brushes off Indian tax officers’ proposal for coronavirus tax on super rich

Finance Ministry sources said that neither IRS Association nor any group of officers mentioned in report were ever asked by the government to give any report on the subject. It was not part of their duty to prepare such a report and taking personal views to the media constituted an act of indiscipline, the sources said.

The report, dated April 23, said that “In times like these, the so called ‘super rich’ have a higher obligation towards ensuring the larger public good”. It also suggested a surcharge for foreign companies with a permanent establishment in India.

Airlines to suffer USD11.2 billion revenue loss, 2.9 million jobs at risk: IATA

Conrad Clifford, IATA’s Regional Vice President for Asia-Pacific.identified India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, South Korea, Sri Lanka and Thailand as priority countries that need to take action. In India, passenger demand in 2020 is estimated to fall by 47 per cent to 89.7 million.

Covid-19 Pandemic:U.S. death toll tops 51,000, Britain nears grim milestone of 20,000

The death toll from COVID-19 in hospitals across the United Kingdom increased on Friday by 684 in 24 hours to 19,506.Passing the 20,000 mark will be an uncomfortable moment for the government, whose Chief Scientific Adviser Patrick Vallance said on March 17 that keeping the toll under that number would be “a good outcome in terms of where we would hope to get.”

Indian airlines may suffer $11.2 bn revenue loss, 2.9 mn jobs at risk: IATA

“Overall, we estimate that the present 90 per cent collapse in air traffic puts around 6.7 million jobs at risk and could lead to a negative GDP impact of 452 billion dollars across Europe. This equates to an additional 1.1 million jobs and 74 billion dollars in GDP over the March estimates of 5.6 million jobs and 378 billion dollars,” said the latest IATA analysis.

ICICI Pru Life’s net profit falls by 6% to Rs1069 cr in FY2020

N S Kannan,MD & CEO, ICICI Prudential Life said, “We had set our aspiration in April 2019 to double our FY2019 Value of New Business (VNB) within four years.  I am happy to report that in FY2020, VNB grew by 21% from Rs 13.28 billion to Rs  16.05 billion for FY2020, which is well within the growth range required to meet that aspiration.On the basis of the advise by the  regulator IRDAI,we haven’t announced any dividend for the full year. Earlier, we had announced a dividend of 20 per dent in H1.”

Australia will make it a crime to use coronavirus tracing data for non-health purposes

The federal government has said existing “social distancing” measures will remain until at least mid-May, and that its willingness to relax them will depend on whether people download the smartphone “app” to identify who a person with the illness has had contact with.

The tracing app, which is yet to be released, has raised concerns from legal and privacy advocates who have said the location data it collects may be used by unrelated bodies like law enforcement agencies.

Shuttered businesses appoint lawyers to take on UK insurer Hiscox

The Hiscox Action Group said on Thursday it represented more than 200 policyholders with “dozens more joining daily”, that discussions with a litigation funder were advanced and that it had appointed Mishcon de Reya as legal adviser.
The dispute hinges on whether the government lockdown and the coronavirus are enough to trigger Hiscox’s business interruption insurance, designed for insured premises that cannot be used because of restrictions imposed by a public authority and in the event of a notifiable disease or infection.

In a statement last week, the insurer said: “General business interruption policies across the industry, including Hiscox’s, were not designed to cover the extraordinary circumstances caused by this pandemic.”

Covid-19 cases in India reaches 23,502,death toll rises to 718

“The growth of COVID-19 cases has been more or less linear, not exponential; this indicates that the strategies we adopted have succeeded in containing the infection to a particular level. Post imposition of lockdown, while the number of new positive cases has increased by 16 times, testing increased by 24 times,” Mishra said in his presentation.