New Delhi: While hearing a petition seeking inclusion of judges and advocates in the first phase of the Covid vaccination drive in the country, the Delhi High Court on Thursday said that it sees no reason to change the priorities set by the Central government.
The government aims to vaccinate nearly 30 crore people in the first phase, which includes three crore healthcare and frontline workers and 27 crore elderly people, mostly above the age of 50 years with comorbidities such as diabetes, heart or liver ailments.
"The government has its own priorities and we do not see any reason to change the priority for vaccination," said a bench comprising Chief Justice D.N. Patel and Justice Jyoti Singh said.
The bench, however, directed the Central government and the Unique Identification Authority of India to consider the petition filed by Amrender Singh, a practicing lawyer, as a representation.
The petition had stated that several advocates faced unprecedented times due to the outbreak of the pandemic and they are still dealing with the repercussions of the same.
New Delhi: Nearly 4.5 million (44,49,552) beneficiaries have received COVID-19 vaccine shots in merely 19 days, the Union Health Ministry said on Thursday.
India became the fastest country in the world to reach the 4 million COVID-19 vaccination mark, achieving this feat in 18 days.
"Many other countries have had a head start of almost 65 days. India launched the countrywide COVID-19 vaccination drive on January 16. The number of beneficiaries being vaccinated every day has also shown a progressive increase," the ministry said.
NEW DELHI: The active cases of Covid-19 further dropped to 1.55 lakh on Thursday, which is 1.44% of the total infections of 1.08 crore while the recovery also shot up to 97.13% as 1.05 cr have recovered, 17,824 of them in the past 24 hours. There were a total of 107 deaths in 24 hours, 30 of them in Maharashtra and 20 in Kerala while they were in a single digit in case of 20 of the 35 states/UTs. Cumulative deaths in the country are 1,54,703.
Only 12,899 new cases were detected in 24 hours in 7.43 lakh tests as against the recovery of 17,824.
