Already with the third largest number of Covid-19 cases worldwide, India on Sunday saw a record single-day jump of 40,425 cases pushing its tally to 11,18,043. This is the first time the country has seen a one-day jump of over 40,000 cases and the fourth consecutive day the Covid count has increased by over 30,000. With 681 new fatalities reported in the last 24 hours, the death toll has also shot up to 27,497. The health ministry said over 70 per cent of the deaths were due to co-morbidities.
In a significant development, New Delhi’s AIIMS has decided to enrol healthy individuals from Monday for conducting human clinical trials of the country’s first indigenous coronavirus vaccine, Covaxin. AIIMS Delhi is among 12 institutes selected by ICMR to conduct Phase 1 and Phase 2 human trials of Covaxin. The vaccine will be tested on 375 volunteers in Phase 1 and 100 of them will be from AIIMS. Covaxin was developed by Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech in collaboration with ICMR and the National Institute of Virology.
The Indian Council of Medical Research is also going to conduct a study to evaluate the effectiveness of the BCG vaccination in elderly individuals between the ages of 60 and 95 living in Covid hotspots across six cities. The objective is to see if the BCG shots can prevent the occurrence of the coronavirus infection and reduce the disease’s severity and mortality rate among the elderly.
There are now 3,90,459 active cases in India. The health ministry said the 11 most Covid-affected countries – the United States, Brazil, Russia, Peru, Chile, Mexico, South Africa, Britain, Iran, Pakistan and Spain --together reported eight times more cases and 14 times more deaths than India.
Of the 574 deaths in the last 24 hours, 144 are from Maharashtra, 93 from Karnataka, 88 from Tamil Nadu, 52 from Andhra Pradesh, 31 from Delhi, 27 from West Bengal, 24 from Uttar Pradesh, 17 from Haryana, 16 from Gujarat and nine from Madhya Pradesh.
Bihar, Punjab and Rajasthan have reported seven fatalities each, followed by Telangana with six deaths, Jammu and Kashmir five, Odisha and Puducherry three deaths each, Assam, Tripura and Kerala two each, while Chandigarh, Chhattisgarh and Uttarakhand have registered one fatality each.
Of the total 26,816 deaths reported so far, Maharashtra accounted for the highest 11,596 fatalities, followed by Delhi with 3,597 deaths, Tamil Nadu 2,403, Gujarat 2,122, Karnataka 1,240, Uttar Pradesh 1,108, West Bengal 1,076, Madhya Pradesh 706 and Andhra Pradesh 586.
So far, 553 people died of Covid-19 in Rajasthan, 409 in Telangana, 344 in Haryana, 246 in Punjab, 236 in J&K, 208 in Bihar, 86 in Odisha, 53 in Assam, 52 in Uttarakhand, 46 in Jharkhand and 40 in Kerala.
Puducherry has registered 28 deaths, Chhattisgarh 24, Goa 21, Chandigarh 12, Himachal Pradesh 11, Tripura 5, Arunachal Pradesh 3, Meghalaya and Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu two each, while Ladakh has reported one fatality.
Maharashtra reported the highest number of cases at 3,00,937, followed by Tamil Nadu at 1,65,714, Delhi at 1,22,793, Karnataka at 59,652, Gujarat at 47,390, Uttar Pradesh at 47,036, Andhra Pradesh at 44,609 and Telangana at 43,780. The number of Covid-19 cases has gone up to 40,209 in West Bengal, 28,500 in Rajasthan, 25,547 in Haryana, 25,136 in Bihar, 22,918 in Assam and 21,763 in Madhya Pradesh. Odisha has reported 16,701 infections, J&K 13,198, Kerala 11,659, while Punjab has 9,792 cases.
