New Delhi:
India reported a daily jump of 30,006 coronavirus infections in 24 hours, taking its tally to 97.96 lakhs, the Health Ministry data this morning showed. The number of cases in the country now stand at 98,26,775. In the 24-hour period, India, which is the second worst-hit country, reported 442 deaths – two more than yesterday – taking the total number of fatalities to 1,42,628.
Here are the top-10 developments on this front from the past 24 hours:
- Maharashtra, with 4,268 fresh cases, remained on top of the worst-hit list of Indian states, with its overall infection number now at 18,72,440. It reported 87 new deaths related to COVID-19 in the past 24 hours, taking the total to 48,059 since the outbreak in January.
- Other states in the top-five of the worst-hit list are Karnataka with 1,210 fresh cases, followed by Andhra Pradesh (520), Tamil Nadu (1,235), and Kerala (4,642).
- Delhi had 2,385 new cases on Friday, making for a positivity rate of 3.33 per cent.
- At least 500 teams of five trained personnel each will be deployed for administering the COVID-19 vaccine in Mumbai. The first to get inoculated will be health workers, followed by frontline workers, people above the age of 50 and those suffering from co-morbidities, officials said on Friday.
- Punjab on Friday ordered an extension of the night curfew in all cities and towns across the state till January 1. The decision to impose the night curfew from December 1 to December 15 was taken amid apprehensions of a second wave of the pandemic.
- The US Food and Drug Adminstration on Friday granted the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine an emergency use authorisation, paving the way for its imminent rollout across the country. President Donald Trump on Friday said the first US vaccine will be administered “in less than 24 hours”.
- The US said it was purchasing 100 million more doses of the Covid-19 vaccine candidate developed by Moderna. That brings the total number of Moderna doses bought by the US to 200 million, enough to immunise 100 million people with the two-shot regimen.
- Britain’s AstraZeneca said on Friday it would investigate combining its experimental COVID-19 vaccine with Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine candidate, a move Russian scientists have suggested could sharply boost efficacy
- Worldwide, over 7 crore people have contracted the virus so far and 15.93 lakh people have died since the beginning of the pandemic.
- The World Health Organization said on Friday nearly 1 billion doses of leading vaccine candidates had been secured as part of the COVAX programme to provide vaccines for low- and middle-income countries.
