A total of 3,390 new confirmed cases of novel coronavirus have been reported in the country during the last twenty four hours taking the total number of cases to 56,342.

Health and Family Welfare Ministry said that 16,540 patients have cured so far and the recovery rate reached to 29.35 percent. During the last 24 hours, 103 deaths have been reported taking the nationwide toll to 1886.Indian Council of Medical Research, ICMR has said that a total of 14,37,788 samples of Covid-19 have been tested by the various government and private laboratories in the country so far. Yesterday, 80,375 tests were conducted.

Meanwhile, ICMR is continuously scaling up its testing facilities for Covid-19 by giving approval to government and private laboratories. As of now, 332 government laboratories and 121 private laboratory chains have been given approval to conduct tests for Covid-19.

Meanwhile,Indian Railways has said that it has operated about 200 Shramik Special trains since 1st of this month and ferried home nearly 2 lakh migrants stranded in various parts of the country due to the coronavirus-induced lockdown.

Forty such trains departed yesterday, including the first train to originate from New Delhi carrying 1,200 migrant workers to Chattarpur in Madhya Pradesh.

Railways said it ran 56 Shramik Special Trains on Wednesday.Every special train has 24 coaches, each with a capacity of 72 seats. But the national transporter is allowing only 54 people in a coach to maintain social distancing norms by not allotting the middle berth to any passenger.

Since the beginning of the services, Gujarat remained one of the top originating stations, followed by Kerala.Among the receiving states, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh remained the top states.   

In Telangana, 15 more people tested positive for Coronavirus taking the total COVID-19 cases to 1122. Out of 15 fresh cases, 12 are from Hyderabad and surrounding areas while 3 are migrants. 45 people have recovered from COVID -19 and discharged from hospital. Currently 400 patients are undergoing treatment at hospital. It may be recalled that 29 deaths reported due to COVID-19 and other reasons.

Meanwhile, 22 out of 33 districts in the state have not reported single Coronavirus positive cases for the past 14 days. Yadadri Bhonagiri, Wanaparthy and Warangal Rural districts have not reported single positive case so far.

Human Resource Development Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank has announced that the Joint Entrance Examination, JEE (Advanced) will be held on 23rd of August. JEE Advanced is an entrance exam for admission to IITs. The crucial exam was scheduled to be held on 17th of this month, but was deferred due to the coronavirus lockdown.

Mr Nishank said, the JEE-Mains will be held from 18th to 23rd July. JEE-Mains is conducted for admission to engineering colleges across the country and is considered as a qualifying exam for JEE-Advanced. The top 2.5 lakh candidates who are successful in JEE Main exam are eligible for appearing in JEE Advanced exam.

The HRD Ministry's National Testing Agency (NTA) had also given students an option to change their opted centres for the two tests as many of them have moved to different places during the lockdown.

However, National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test, NEET will be held on 26th July.

Earlier this month, the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) deferred the Civil Services Preliminary Examination, 2020 scheduled to be held on 31st May due to the lockdown. The new date for the test will be decided later this month