Bihar chief secretary Arun Kumar Singh succumbs to COVID-19

Bihar chief secretary Arun Kumar Singh, on Friday, passed away at a hospital in Patna due to COVID-19 complications. Singh, who was a senior IAS officer, was admitted to a hospital after testing positive for coronavirus and was undergoing treatment.  

He was appointed as the chief secretary of Bihar in February this year, days after Janata Dal-United supremo Nitish Kumar won the assembly elections in the state. Singh, a 1985-batch officer, had replaced senior IAS officer Deepak Kumar. A native of Bihar's West Champaran district, Singh was scheduled to retire this year on August 31.

After his demise, the state government has started the process of making an appointment to the post of chief secretary.

For the unversed, Bihar currently has 1,00,822 active coronavirus cases and so far 2,480 lives have been lost in the state due to COVID-19. India recorded 3,86,452 new COVID-19 cases, 3,498 related deaths and 2,97,540 recoveries on Thursday. Active caseload surged by 85,414 and currently stands at 3,170,228 from the 3,084,814 reported previously. This accounts for 16.90% of the total confirmed cases in the country.

The Centre on Thursday directed the states and Union territories to go for intensive local containment measures in the districts that have a high number of COVID-19 cases to curb the spread of the viral disease. 

Meanwhile, all vaccination centres in India's financial capital of Mumbai were shut for three days starting Friday due to a shortage of vaccines, said authorities, as the country posted another record daily rise in COVID-19 cases.

Nearly 1.33 crore people registered on the CoWIN platform for the next phase of the nationwide coronavirus vaccination drive, which will cover all adults between the ages of 18 and 44 years.