New Delhi/Hyderabad
India on Wednesday recorded 137 deaths due to the Covid-19 virus, the lowest in eight months, with Maharashtra topping 47 mortalities, followed by 19 in Kerala, 14 in Chhattisgarh, 9 in West Bengal and 8 in Uttar Pradesh, while over 2 million were given the vaccine till Wednesday morning.
The daily coronavirus recovered cases in India have been continuing to outnumber daily new cases for the last 20 days, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) said.
Total cumulative recoveries stand at 1,03,59,305 today with 12,689 patients recovered and discharged in the last 24 hours and the national recovery rate has further grown to 96.91 per cent.
India's total active caseload stands at 1,76,498 today and present active caseload now composes just 1.65 per cent of India's total positive cases.
"India has one of the lowest daily new cases per million population (69) in the last 7 days," it said, adding, the sustained encouraging results have been made possible with the Centre-led proactive and calibrated strategy of Test Track Treat Technology.
Covaxin, the Covid vaccine developed by Bharat Biotech, effectively neutralizes UK variants of SARS-CoV-2 reducing the possibility of mutant virus escape, finds a study. According to the research paper carried by bioRxiv, the preprint server for biology, the study has dispelled the uncertainty of possible neutralization escape.
A group of researchers from Indian Council of Medical Research(ICMR), National Institute of Virology, Pune and Bharat Biotech performed the plaque reduction neutralization test (PRNT50) using sera collected from the 26 recipients of BBV152/Covaxin against hCoV-19/India/20203522 (UK-variant) and hCoV27 19/ India/ 2020 Q111 (heterologous strain).
"A comparable neutralization activity of sera of the vaccinated individuals showed against UK-variant and the heterologous strain with similar efficiency, dispel the uncertainty of possible neutralization escape," says the paper, yet to be certified by peer review.
As a beneficiary of India's vaccine diplomacy, Sri Lanka will on Thursday receive a consignment of 500,000 doses of 'Covishield' vaccine manufactured by the Serum Institute of India. The gift of vaccine doses to Lanka is a part of India’s 'Vaccine Maitri' initiative under which India has gifted vaccines to 7 other nations in the region.
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