Coronavirus: The new coronavirus has infected 6.7 million people and has cost more than 15 billion lives so far.
New Delhi:
Amid preparations to begin inoculation of high-risk groups, the daily count of coronavirus cases in India fell to 26,567 in the past 24 hours, the lowest in nearly five months, government data shows. The daily case count is the lowest since July 10, when 26,506 new infections were detected against 2.3 lakh tests with a positivity rate of 9.3%. In the last 24 hours, nearly 10 lakh of samples were tested and the positivity rate was approximately 2.6 percent.
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As of yesterday, this is the third Covid indicator to hit July levels after active cases, which have fallen below 4 lakh, and daily deaths, which were less than 400 after 157 days yesterday.
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Up to 385 people lost their lives fighting COVID-19 in the past 24 hours. The death rate has hovered around 1.5 percent since the September peak.
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Total active cases (new cases minus recoveries) stood at 3.8 lakh as some 39,000 people battled the viral illness in the past 24 hours. Overall, more than 91.97 lakhs of people have recovered from COVID-19 so far, bringing the recovery rate to 94.6 percent.
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The drop in daily numbers has been due to a lower burden of infections in Maharashtra, Kerala, West Bengal and Delhi, all of which saw an increase in the run-up to the November festival season.
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In the past day, although Kerala and Maharashtra continued to record the highest daily infections, their case burden has dropped to about 3,000 each. West Bengal, which has recorded more than 3,000 cases since the Durga Puja festivities in October, also recorded around 2,200 cases. Delhi’s daily cases dropped to 1,674 thanks to fewer tests, while Rajasthan continued to record nearly 2,000 cases, indicating a spread across the state.
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The highest daily deaths were recorded in Delhi (63), West Bengal (48), Maharashtra (40), Chhattisgarh (21) and 23 deaths each from Kerala and Haryana.
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India’s overall coronavirus count has surpassed 97 lakhs with a total of 1,40,958 deaths since the country’s first case was detected in January, nearly a month after the Sars-CoV-2 outbreak in China.
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On Wednesday, a panel of experts will review the request from three pharmaceutical companies, the Serum Institute of India, Pfizer and Bharat Biotech, to approve the emergency use of their coronavirus vaccines in India. The panel will send its recommendations to the DGCI drug controller, which will authorize their use.
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The UK, which will start delivering the Pfizer vaccine to its population from today, plans to test it in combination with another vaccine from AstraZeneca Plc, also a candidate in India.
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As the year draws to a close with the world better equipped to handle the coronavirus pandemic than it was at the beginning, essential workers – nurses, doctors, delivery drivers, grocery store clerks and others who risked their lives on the front lines. – won TIME’s 2020 Person of the Year reader poll. The virus has infected 6.7 million people and has cost more than 15 million lives so far.
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