Door-to-door control by health officials in Odisha (Express photo)
With Assam joining the league, the top ten states with the highest case burden now have more than a lakh of people infected with the new coronavirus.
Simultaneously, Mizoram discovered 29 new cases on Friday to bring its confirmed infections beyond 1,000. With that, every state and union territory in the country except Lakshadweep now has at least 1,000 people who have been infected with the disease. Lakshadweep remains unaffected by the epidemic, and so far no cases of infection have been reported on the islands.
Also on Friday, Andhra Pradesh surpassed the four lakh figure of confirmed infections and is all set to overtake Tamil Nadu in a couple of days to become the state with the second highest number of cases in the country. After a few days of relative decline, Andhra Pradesh has once again started reporting more than 10,000 new cases each day, only after Maharashtra, which has been discovering more than 14,000 cases in recent days.
Covid-19 Vaccine Tracker
The timeline for a new coronavirus vaccine appears to have advanced steadily, from early next year to the end of the year. On Friday, US President Donald Trump promised to produce a vaccine before the end of this year, “or it may even be earlier.”
And in a separate development, Britain said it would amend its laws to ensure that a new coronavirus vaccine receives emergency approval as soon as it is declared safe in clinical trials. She said she would not wait for the full licensing process to complete. The new legal provision could go into effect as early as October this year, allowing its drug regulator to grant emergency approvals for a vaccine that has been shown to be safe. The amended law would also protect drug companies from being sued if the vaccines produced side effects.
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