India’s tally of cases of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) reached 10.52 million on Friday, a day before pan-nation vaccination drive against the disease is scheduled to commence, the Ministry of health and family welfare (MoHFW) said. The country recorded a total of 15,590 new infections in the preceding 24 hours taking the national tally to 10,527,683, the ministry’s dashboard showed.
A total of 15,975 patients were discharged in the last 24 hours, the dashboard showed, taking the total number of recovered cases to 10,162,738 or 96.52% of the national tally. In the same duration, the infection claimed 191 more lives taking the death toll to 151,198 or 1.44% of total cases. Active cases, meanwhile, dipped further, falling by 576 to 213,027 or 2.03% of the total tally.
The government-run Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) said the new positive cases were from 730,096 samples tested for Covid-19 in the previous 24 hours. The body further said it had tested total 184,962,401 samples thus far.
Prime Minister Narendra will virtually launch the country’s vaccination drive, set to be the largest in the world. On day 1 of the vaccination drive, 3,006 session sites across all states and Union territories will be virtually connected during the launch with around 100 beneficiaries to be vaccinated at each site, the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) had said in a statement on Thursday. In the first phase of the vaccination drive, 30 million frontline workers will be inoculated.
Oxford University-AstraZeneca’s Covishield, and Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech International Limited’s Covaxin have been granted emergency use authorisation in India. While Pune-based Serum Institute of India (SII) will manufacture Covishield in the country, Covaxin is the country’s first indigenous vaccine against Covid-19. India has the second-highest Covid-19 caseload in the world behind the United States.
