作者： bharat.cn

A three-month old child was reportedly killed and his mother injured after a wall collapse in Bhadrak, Odisha as extremely severe cyclone ‘Amphan’ hurtled towards east coast on Wednesday, triggering heavy rains and strong winds in parts of Odisha and West Bengal. The cyclone is expected to cross Odisha coast at 4pm.

More than 1.37 lakh people have so far been evacuated from low-lying coastal areas of Odisha, said Special Relief Commissioner (SRC) P K Jena.

The extremely severe cyclonic storm lay about 150 km northeast of Paradip in Odisha, and 95 km away from Digha (West Bengal),  said H R Biswas, the Director of the Meteorological Centre, Bhubaneswar. The wind velocity reached a maximum of 106 kmph in Paradip.

It is likely to move north-northeastwards across northwest Bay of Bengal and cross West Bengal  Bangladesh coasts between Digha (West Bengal) and Hatiya Islands (Bangladesh) close to Sunderbans during evening hours of Wednesday, with a maximum sustained wind speed of 155-165 kmph gusting to 185 kmph.

IMD DG Mrutyunjay Mohapatra says 4-5-meter high tidal waves are expected in Sundarbans, and 2-3 meter high in Digha in West Bengal, but there is no threat to Odisha coast.

Intense rainfall was recorded in several areas of Puri, Khurda, Jagatsinghpur, Cuttack, Kendrapara, Jajpur, Ganjam, Ganjam, Bhadrak, Mayurbhanj and Balasore districts since Tuesday.

Jena said Paradip recorded 214 mm of rainfall since Tuesday, while it was 87 mm in Puri, 70.5 mm in Chandbali, 58.5 mm in Balasore and 50 mm in Bhubaneswar as heavy downpour battered many parts of coastal Odisha.

Heavy rains and strong winds are likely to continue in Bhadrak and Balasore districts for the next two-three hours. 

Heavy downpour accompanied by gusty wind also lashed Kendrapara where district administration has evacuated 38,000 people from vulnerable seaside pockets to the safety of multi-purpose cyclone shelter buildings.

Many trees and electric poles have been uprooted in various parts of the coastal districts. However, there has been no damage to life and property so far.

In Kendrapada district’s Mahakalapada, fire brigade personnel rescued a pregnant woman who was shifted to a hospital where she gave birth to a healthy baby.

Providing huge relief to people, specially in the country’s small towns and cities, the railways will run 200 special passenger trains from June 1, the national transporter said on Tuesday.

These trains will have non-air conditioned second class coaches and will run daily.
They will be plied in addition to the Shramik Special and the air-conditioned special trains which are currently being operated on the Rajdhani routes connecting 15 major cities to Delhi.

All categories of passengers will be allowed to book tickets which will be available online.

“Indian Railways will run 200 non-AC trains daily as per the time table from June 1, whose online booking will start soon,” tweeted Railway Minister Piyush Goyal.

While the railways is yet to state which routes these trains will run on, officials said they could cater to the smaller towns and cities.

Earlier, the railways had cancelled all its regular passenger services till June 30.

Railways said the move to start these 200 trains would also be helpful for migrants who can avail these trains if they are unable to board the Shramik Special trains.

“Efforts will be made such that they (migrants) will be able to board trains from Railway Station Head on mainline which is close to their existing location,” the railways said.

The railways also said it has asked the state governments to identify and locate the migrants who are walking on roads to go to their home states and transport them to the nearest main line railway station after registering them the nearest district headquarters. It has also asked the states to give a list of these travellers to the Railway Authorities so that arrangements can be made for their further travel through Shramik specials.

Hundreds of more people tested positive on Tuesday for the deadly coronavirus infection across India with a large number of them have returned from other states or from abroad, even as officials said India’s mortality rate has been very low and it has taken much longer here for the tally to hit the one-lakh mark than many other countries.

In its morning 8 AM update, the Union Health Ministry said the total number of confirmed cases has reached 1,01,139 and the death toll has risen to 3,163. This marked an increase of nearly 5,000 cases and 134 fatalities in a 24-hour period.

More than 39,000 patients have recovered too, still leaving over 59,000 active cases in the country — which is the seventh-largest globally after the US, Russia, Brazil, France, Italy and Peru.

INDIA FARING BETTER THAN WORLD: GOVT

The Health Ministry said that for every one lakh population, there are 7.1 coronavirus cases in India so far, as against 60 globally.

Referring to data from the World Health Organisation, the ministry said 45,25,497 Covid-19 cases had been reported worldwide till Monday, which is about 60 cases per lakh population.

Among the countries with a very high load of coronavirus cases, the US, with 14,09,452 instances of the infection so far, has around 431 cases per lakh population. In the UK, this ratio is 494 cases per lakh and for Italy, it is 372.

TOOK 64 DAYS FOR CASES TO CROSS 1 LAKH

Officials also cited data about India having taken 64 days for the count of confirmed cases to increase from 100 to one lakh, which was more than double the time taken by countries like the US and Spain. According to the data sourced from the health ministry and Worldometers, the coronavirus infection cases increased from 100 to 1,00,000 in the US in 25 days, while it took 30 days for the cases to reach the 1 lakh-mark in Spain.

It took 35 days in Germany, 36 days in Italy, 39 days in France and 42 days in the United Kingdom for the coronavirus infection cases to rise from 100 to 1 lakh, respectively.