The Evening Wrap Welcome to the Evening Wrap newsletter, your guide to the day’s biggest stories with concise analysis from The Hindu. We hope you are staying home and staying safe. Here are the big stories that you need to follow today: Linear Curve The Health Ministry continues to strike a fairly positive note on the spread of the coronavirus in India. It said in a briefing today that the growth of the virus in the country has been linear and not exponential, and that the government has been able to cut transmission and minimise its spread in 30 days of the nationwide lockdown. A presentation made by C.K. Misra, chairman of one of the 11 empowered groups of officers that the government had formed to deal with various aspects of the coronavirus, also noted that recovery rates had improved to 19.89 per cent, with 4,257 people being discharged after receiving treatment. The recovery rate last week was 9.99 per cent last week. “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 has increased by 24 times,” Misra said. “During the 30 days of lockdown, we have been able to cut transmission, minimise spread, and increase doubling days of COVID-19. We have been able to consistently ramp up testing and utilise our time preparing for the future in case the virus spreads further,” he added. COVID watch: The Numbers The total number of COVID-19 cases in India stand at 22,906, with the death toll now at 716. Not too Dear The Finance Ministry on Thursday issued an order freezing the Dearness Allowance (DA) to Central government employees and Dearness Relief (DR) to Central government pensioners at current rates till July 2021. “The undersigned is directed to say that in view of the crisis arising out of COVID-19, it has been decided that the additional instalment of Dearness Allowance payable to Central government employees and Dearness Relief to Central government pensioners, due from January 1, 2020, shall not be paid,” said the order. Trump Executive Order U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed an executive order temporarily suspending immigration into the country during the coronavirus pandemic. “In order to protect our great American workers, I’ve just signed an executive order temporarily suspending immigration into the United States,” Trump said at a daily press conference about the coronavirus at the White House. “This will ensure that unemployed Americans of all backgrounds will be first in line for jobs as our economy reopens.” As we mentioned yesterday, the order is in place for 60 days effective from April 23, after which it will be reviewed. The order will not have any impact on the processing of temporary visas for skilled employees, including Indians who apply to work in the U.S. on H1-B visas. Long way to go The WHO has warned that most countries were still in the early stages of tackling the coronavirus pandemic and that the infection was here to stay for a long time to come. Further, there were “worrying upward trends” in early epidemics in parts of Africa, Central and South America, and Eastern Europe, according to Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who was speaking to journalists via a virtual briefing. “Most countries are still in the early stages of their epidemics and some that were affected early in the pandemic are starting to see a resurgence in cases,” he added. “Make no mistake: we have a long way to go. This virus will be with us for a long time.” CWC to government The Congress Working Committee in its meeting (held virtually) on Thursday demanded that the remaining period of lockdown be used to prepare and publish a detailed ‘exit strategy’ and a comprehensive ‘road map’ for the future. “The states must be empowered to devise solutions to the challenges due to COVID-19,” says the resolution adopted unanimously by the CWC, the party’s highest decision-making body. Congress president Sonia Gandhi also took aim at the government over the poor quality of testing kits. “We have repeatedly urged the Prime Minister that there is no alternative to testing, tracing, and quarantine programmes. Unfortunately, testing still remains low and testing kits are still in short supply and of poor quality. PPE kits are being provided to our doctors & healthcare workers but the number and quality is poor,” she said. In brief: Three days after landing in West Bengal as per instructions from the Ministry of Home Affairs, two groups of an Inter Ministerial Central Team (IMCT) on Thursday checked COVID-19 hotspots, hospitals, and quarantine centres. The monitoring by the central team continues to be done in the backdrop of the West Bengal chief minister calling the team’s visit a unilateral action and accusing the Central government of sending faulty testing kits. Today, Oxford University began human trials of potential COVID-19 vaccines. Germany, too, has given approval for testing of a vaccine developed by pharma majors Biontech and Pfizer, on human volunteers. If all goes well, the production of the Oxford trial vaccine could start as early as September. | 
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