Our Bureau
New Delhi
The daily new Covid-19 cases on Tuesday touched a new low of 10,064 in India in 24 hours after 7 months that were 10,956 on June 12 last year while the daily deaths were less than 140 after 7 months, to be exact 137, 35 of them in Maharashtra, 17 in Kerala, 10 in West Bengal and 8 in Delhi.
The total active caseload also dropped to nearly 2 lakh (2,00,528), which was just 1.90% of the total positive cases. The fall in the number of daily new cases is accompanied by a fast rising number of people getting vaccinated against Covid-19 across all states and UTs. The total number of people vaccinated is more than double the number of active cases.
In the last 24 hours, 2,23,669 people were vaccinated across 3,930 sessions taking the cumulative total of people vaccinated to 4,54,049 (across 7,860 sessions conducted so far). The highest 66,302 were vaccinated in Karnataka so far, followed by Andhra 46,680, Odisha 46,506, Bihar 33,389 West Bengal 29,866, Rajasthan 23,546, UP 22,644, Maharashtra 18,582, MP 18,174, and Haryana 17,642. The national capital had low vaccination of 7,968 while Goa is the state vaccinating only 426 persons.
India's positivity rate has also seen a big drop with the rise in the number of testing infrastructure, its weekly positivity rate recorded at 1.97%. As many as 22 of the 35 states/UTs have weekly positivity rate less than the national average.
India's recovery rate has jumped to 96.66%, with 102.29 lakh total recoveries, 17,411 of them in the past 24 hours. Kerala reported the highest number of 3,921 recoveries in a single day, followed by 3,854 in Maharashtra and 1,301 in Chhattisgarh. 10 states and UTs reported 80% of new recovered cases. In contrast, Kerala had the highest number of 3,346 cases in the past 24 hours, followed by 1924 in Maharashtra and 551 in Tamil Nadu.
Bharat Biotech has secured a fresh Letter of Comfort from the Centre for another 45 lakh doses of its Covid vaccine Covaxin, sources said. Of the 45 lakh doses, the Hyderabad-based vaccine maker will be supplying over 8 lakh doses to friendly countries — Bhutan, Maldives, Mauritius, Philippines, Seychelles and Myanmar — for free as a goodwill gesture. The company will be dispatching 20 lakh doses of the earlier order in a couple of days. "The company was given a fresh letter of comfort recently for supplying 45 lakh more doses of Covaxin. The doses will be dispatched as when the Ministry places orders with the company," sources told PTI. Meanwhile, Bangladesh Health Minister Zahid Maleque said the country would receive 2 million doses of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine (Covishield) from India as a "gift. "We expect the vaccine will arrive as per schedule on Wed or on Thu. I will receive the vaccine at Dhaka airport," he told IANS.
0.18% adverse events: MoH
Of the total people vaccinated so far, the govt said 0.18% were adverse events following immunisation, while 0.002% had to be hospitalised which is fairly low. In a press conference, NITI Aayog member (health) VK Paul said concerns about adverse effects and serious problems post immunisation as of now seem to be unfounded, negligible, insignificant and stressed that both the vaccines are safe. It was sad "doctors, nurses and healthcare workers are refusing to get vaccinated" and requested the people to get the shots. Union health secy Rajesh Bhushan said, "As per the data, only 0.18% is the Adverse Event Following Immunization (AEFI) and 0.002 is the percentage of people hospitalized following immunization. These are fairly low, in fact lowest so far as we know in the world in the first 3 days." India recorded highest first day vaccinations for immunisation. In the US 79,458 people were vaccinated, in the UK 19,700 and 73 were vaccinated in France on the first day.
