According to the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, the number of active Covid-19 cases is 3,08,751 while 95,50,712 have so far recovered from the disease.
347 deaths have been reported in the past 24 hours and with that India's death toll has climbed to 1,45,136.
In a positive development, the recovery rate improved to 95.46% as of December 19.
Meanwhile, according to the Indian Council of Medical Research, a total of 16,00,90,514 samples were tested for coronavirus up to 18 December. Of these, 11,71,868 samples were tested on Friday.
India became the second country after the United States to cross 1 crore coronavirus cases.
Covid-19 vaccine candidates in India
The ministry of health and family welfare had earlier revealed that as many as nine Covid-19 vaccine candidates, that are currently under clinical trials, will be ready for authorisation in the near future.
The ministry of health and family welfare in a press briefing informed that the vaccines include
- Astrazeneca and Oxford university developed, Serum Institute of India manufactured 'Covishield'
- 'Covaxin' by Bharat Biotech Limited
- ZyCoV-D by Zydus Cadila
- Russian vaccine candidate 'Sputnik-V'
- NVX-CoV2373 by SII
- HGCO19 by Geneva
- Two others that are the Recombinant Protein Antigen based vaccine by Biological E Limited and Inactivated rabies vector platform by Bharat Biotech.
All these vaccines are currently undergoing different phases of clinical trials - the former five vaccine candidates are either in phase II or phase III, the latter three are in pre-clinical trial phases.
Pfizer India became the first pharmaceutical to approach DCGI for emergency use authorisation, soon after it had received necessary permission in the UK and Bahrain.
Pfizer India submitted its application on December 4 and then the Serum institute also filed for the EUA while Bharat Biotech applied for the same.