Over 50% of the Supreme Court (SC) staff tested positive for coronavirus after test results of as many as 44 of 97 of them came back as positive.

Following the spiraling COVID-19 crisis in the apex court, the SC judges will now appear for hearings from their homes via video conferencing.

The entire court premises comprising courtrooms are being sanitised and the benches will sit an hour late from the scheduled time on Monday as judges held a meeting over the situation.

DEU said that, ‘Benches, scheduled to sit at 10.30 am, will sit at 11.30 am, whereas those slated to sit at 1 am, will sit at 12 pm.

Several benches led by CJI (Chief Justice of India) S A Bodbe and justices UU Lalit, Ashok Bhushan, K M Joseph, and R. Subhash Reddy will now assemble an hour late in the courtrooms.

Meanwhile, the secretary-general of the SC has said that they are collating numbers about the COVID spread as contact tracing is being carried out. Delhi on Sunday, April 11, registered the highest one-day spike in coronavirus cases till date.

Meanwhile, India registered a record 168,912 coronavirus cases overnight, data from the Union Health Ministry showed on Monday, surpassing Brazil to become the second-most affected nation globally by COVID-19. India’s total caseload touched 13.53 million, overtaking Brazil’s 13.45 million, Reuters reported. The United States (US) led the global tally with 31.2 million COVID-19 cases.