The Indian city of Mumbai is to roll out mandatory coronavirus tests in crowded places as the country grapples with a rise in infections. The local government said rapid tests would be done randomly in areas such as shopping centres and train stations. A refusal to be tested will “amount to an offence”, it said.

India recorded 40,953 new Covid cases on Saturday, the biggest daily jump for nearly four months. A total 159,000 people have died with the disease. It has seen more than 11.5 million cases of coronavirus infections so far – and the number has been steadily climbing for weeks as the country scrambles to vaccinate its population and identify highly contagious variants of the disease. In Mumbai, a coronavirus hotspot in the western state of Maharashtra, 2,982 people have contracted the disease in the past 24 hours.(BBC)…[+]