India has reported 13,586 coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours in the biggest one-day spike. Government data shows the highly infectious disease has claimed 336 lives in the last 24 hours. India has so far reported 3,80,532 coronavirus cases, of which 2,04,711 have recovered; the recovery rate is 53.79 per cent. A total of 12,573 have died till now. The samples of 64,26,672 people have been tested across the country till today. At least 1,76,959 were tested on Thursday and 7.67 per cent of them were found positive.
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No new case of coronavirus has been reported from Mizoram in the last 24 hours, government sources said on Friday, news agency PTI reported. According to a statement by the Department of Information and Public Relations, all 814 samples tested at Zoram Medical College on Thursday have reported negative.
The centre has pitched for a unified strategy for Delhi and its satellite cities to tackle the coronavirus pandemic, while the city government ramped up COVID-19 diagnosis by starting testing through the rapid antigen method.
It would be better to conduct COVID-19 testing through the new rapid antigen methodology approved by the Indian Council of Medical Research or ICMR, which will ramp up the testing capacity and help in early diagnosis and treatment, Home Minister Amit Shah said, according to PTI.
In Uttar Pradesh, the Allahabad High Court on Thursday asked the state government to try mass testing for COVID-19. The court said that to begin with, testing could be done in Allahabad city.
Science and Technology Minister Harsh Vardhan on Thursday launched the country's first mobile laboratory for coronavirus testing. It can be deployed in rural areas to help promote last-mile testing access.
The centre has fully lifted an export ban on hydroxychloroquine, a drug favoured by US President Donald Trump as a treatment against coronavirus, as questions remain over the malaria medicine's effectiveness against COVID-19.
The Directorate General of Foreign Trade said in a notice that "hydroxychloroquine and its formulations" were now "free" to be exported. India accounts for 70 per cent of global production of hydroxychloroquine, which is also used to treat lupus and rheumatoid arthritis.
Nearly 20,000 samples were tested in Delhi on Thursday, the highest tests in a day. Of these, 13,000 were RT-PCR tests and 7,000 were rapid tests. The testing of samples doubled after Home Minister Amit Shah and Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal met to work out a way to battle the pandemic.
China has published the genome data for the coronavirus behind the latest COVID-19 outbreak in the capital city of Beijing, the website of state-backed National Microbiology Data Centre showed on Friday, news agency Reuters reported.
The World Health Organization (WHO) says that a few hundred million COVID-19 vaccine doses could be produced by the end of the year. As pharmaceutical firms rush to find a vaccine, the UN health agency says it hopes two billion doses will be available by the end of 2021.
