“India has reported a landmark achievement today. India’s total active Covid-19 caseload has fallen below the four lakh mark today to 396,729. This number translates to just 4.1 per cent of total cases. This is the lowest after 140 days. The total active cases were 390,459 on July 20,” the government said in a statement.
India which rank second in the cases tally, in the last 24-hours, witnessed 39,109 recoveries and reported 36,011 cases new cases, as per the ministry’s dashboard. The total number of recoveries and fatalities, meanwhile, is at 9,139,901 and 140,573 respectively. Recoveries, active cases, and deaths constitute 94.45 per cent, 4.10 per cent and 1.45 per cent, respectively, of India’s total cases.
India from the last 10 days, has maintained the trend of reporting more new recoveries than daily Covid-19 cases. The number of new cases recorded per million population in India in the last seven days, 182, are among the lowest in the world, the ministry further said.
Covid Vaccine Status
It is also worth mentioning, that as the daily Covid-19 cases have seen a slump in the country, the vaccine candidates for the coronavirus disease, are almost in the last phase of clinical trials and are very soon expected to reach the public. Adar Poonawalla’s Serum Institute of India (SII) has applied for emergency use authorization of Oxford University-AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 candidate, Covishield. This makes the Pune-based SII the second firm to have sought emergency use authorization in India, after America’s Pfizer Inc, and the first indigenous firm to do so.
Meanwhile, another indigenous Covid-19 vaccine Covaxin, which is being developed by Bharat Biotech and the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), is also in the final stage of human trials and is expected to seek emergency approval from the government, by January 2021.