With 61,408 new infections reported in the country, the tally has now risen to 31.06 lakh. Of these, 23,38,036 patients have already recovered, while 7,10,771 are still active. The toll stands at 57,542 with 836 deaths reported in the last 24 hours.
India’s coronavirus case tally crossed the 30 lakh-mark and settled at 30,44,940 on Saturday, 16 days after crossing the 20 lakh-mark and eight days after breaching the 25 lakh-mark.
With this, the covid-19 recovery rate stands at 75% and the case fatality rate declines to 1.85%.
Maharashtra has 1,71,859 active cases, the highest in the country followed by Andhra Pradesh with 89,742 active cases.
As many as 6,09,917 samples were tested on August 23 while a total of 3,59,02,137 samples have been tested so far.
The Union Health Ministry said the gap between recoveries and COVID-19 active cases continues to widen as the recoveries are more than three times the active cases.
Phase-2 clinical trials of the vaccine being developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca would begin this week. The trials are being conducted by the Pune-based Serum Institute of India, which has an agreement with AstraZeneca to manufacture and market this vaccine for low and middle-income countries, including India.
Globally, infections have crossed the 23 million-mark with over 8 lakh deaths.US President Donald Trump, meanwhile, said a treatment based on blood plasma donated by people who’ve recovered from COVID-19 will be expanded, even before researchers fully understand how well it works. “This is a powerful therapy,” Trump said at a White House news conference. “Today’s action will dramatically expand access to this treatment.” The US Food and Drug Administration confirmed Sunday that it had cleared what’s known as convalescent plasma for use in certain patients
