India’s coronavirus tally cross 1-crore mark as outbreak slows

India’s coronavirus case count has crossed the 1 crore-mark on Saturday with the addition of 25,153 fresh cases and reached a total of 1,00,04,599. The Covid-19 death toll has also climbed to 1,45,136.

Of the over 1 crore cases, total numbers of recovered cases now stand at 95,50,712 while the number of active cases are at 3,08,751.

The Ministry of Health has said, “India’s Covid recoveries have witnessed a steep exponential rise – from 50,000 in May to over 95 lakh in December. Recoveries are more than 30 times the active cases (currently only 3.14% of total cases).”

ICMR has said a total of 16,00,90,514 samples have been tested upto December 18 and 11,71,868 samples were tested on December 18 itself.

Currently six coronavirus vaccines are undergoing clinical trials in India and are in different stages of development. These vaccines are — Covaxin being developed by Bharat Biotech in collaboration with ICMR, second one developed by Zydus Cadila, third one by Gennova, Oxford vaccine, trial of which is conducted by Serum Institute of India, Sputnik V vaccine which is being manufactured by Dr Reddy’s Lab, Hyderabad, in collaboration with Russia’s Gamaleya National Centre and the sixth one manufactured by Biological E Ltd, Hyderabad, in collaboration with MIT.

Meanwhile, three vaccines have sought emergency use authorisation (EUA) in India. The Pfizer vaccine, which is already being used for mass vaccination in the US, UK, Canada and a few other nations, has sought authorisation in India as well. Bharat Biotech and Serum Institute have also sought EUA for their vaccine candidates.