India has recorded 69,878 coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours, taking its total to 2,975,701. With 953 fatalities reported on Friday, the country’s death toll has surged to 55,928. India remained the third worst-hit country in the world after the US and Brazil, the Union health ministry’s data showed on Saturday.
The number of active cases were at 697,330 and 55,794 people have succumbed to the viral disease, data showed. The recovery rate climbed to 74.69% as record 63,631 Covid-19 patients were discharged from hospitals in the last 24 hours. There are 2,222,577 people who have been cured of the coronavirus disease till date.
As many as 23,120,802 people around the world have been diagnosed with Covid-19. While 15,714,993 have recovered, 803,213 have died so far.
•India will see close to 57,000 deaths by the end of Saturday, with around 16,000 of them being registered since it crossed the two million mark. A little over 13,000 of them were registered between the time it crossed one million cases and touched two million.
•The third million cases largely mirrored the trend of the second. Maharashtra accounted for 18.6% of the million, Andhra Pradesh 14.9%, Karnataka 11.1%, and Tamil Nadu 9.3%. Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, two of India’s most populous states accounted for 7.2% and 5.3% of the million cases. West Bengal accounted for 4.8% of the cases, and Assam 3.9%. Delhi accounted for just 1.8% of cases.
•British Pharma giant AstraZeneca has tied up with Pune-based Serum Institute of India (SII) to produce a billion doses for low-income nations including India. The Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) had already given the go-ahead to conduct Phase II/III trial of Oxford vaccine in India. The trials are being conducted in 17 selected sites across India on 1600 volunteers, including KEM and Nair Hospitals of Mumbai
•Union health and family welfare minister Dr Harsh Vardhan in an interview to Hindustan Times said vaccine trials against Covid-19 are being fast-tracked globally. “It is expected that the trials of India-made vaccines would be completed by the end of this year. We will know the efficacy of vaccines by then. The Oxford vaccine produced by Serum Institute of India is already being produced parallelly, so that the time required to market it will be reduced to a larger extent.”
•As the race for a vaccine against the coronavirus heats up, the US faces another potential crisis: a shortage of syringes. The US federal government has already spent hundreds of millions of dollars in hopes of warding off a syringe shortage, if and when a Covid-19 vaccine is approved. It comes as shortages of personal protective equipment continue to hamper the response to the pandemic.India is not planning to follow a preset benchmark for selecting a Covid-19 vaccine and will explore all available options for mass immunization against the contagion. “When we will have a vaccine ready, we will look at all parameters in a balanced manner, how effective it is, what is the cost, ease of administration, besides other factors,” said Dr V.K. Paul, NITI Aayog member (health), and the chairman of the National Expert Group on Vaccine Administration.•Bangladesh will be a priority recipient for the Covid-19 vaccine developed in India, according to foreign secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla. “For us, Bangladesh is always a priority country,” Shringla who is on a two-day visit here quoted by local media as telling reporters here on Wednesday on being asked about the vaccines