Doctors and healthcare professionals are "warriors" in fight against coronavirus and have to be protected, the Supreme Court said on Wednesday even as the Centre assured that it is doing its best by providing them personal protective equipment (PPE) and other facilities.

Two earthquakes of mild intensity struck West Bengal and Sikkim within a gap of 12-hours on Wednesday, an IMD official said here.

Another person in Kalaburagi District reportedly succumbed to coronavirus on Tuesday night, taking the total deaths due to virus in the state to five. This is also the second death due to the virus in the Kalaburagi District. 

 A sizeable chunk of the 29 million doses of hydroxychloroquine bought by the US to combat the coronavirus pandemic is from India, President Donald Trump has said as he acknowledged that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was "great" when he sought his help to allow the sale of the anti-malaria drug to treat the growing number of COVID-19 patients in America.

About 400 million people working in the informal economy in India are at risk of falling deeper into poverty due to the coronavirus crisis which is having "catastrophic consequences", and is expected to wipe out 195 million full-time jobs or 6.7 per cent of working hours globally in the second quarter of this year, the UN's labour body has warned.

The death toll due to the novel coronavirus rose to 149 and the number of cases to 5,194 in the country on Wednesday, according to the Union Health Ministry.

Tens of thousands of people in Wuhan, the origin point and epicentre for the coronavirus pandemic, began travelling out of the sprawling city on Wednesday as China lifted its 73-day lockdown, even as the number of fresh COVID-19 cases crossed 1,000 in the country and two new deaths heightened concerns of a rebound in infections.