Coronavirus: 38,073 fresh COVID-19 cases in India, 17% lower than yesterday

In the past 24 hours, up to 38,073 fresh COVID-19 cases were recorded in India, 17% lower than yesterday. Overall, 85.91 lakh cases have so far been reported, with 1,27,059 deaths. The number of active cases stood at 5,05,265, down 4,408 since Monday.

Maharashtra had the highest number of cases at 1,00,488 (up 3,192 since Monday), with also the highest number of fresh deaths at 85, taking the state's total figure up to 45,325. The other top states that followed Maharashtra in this list were Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, and Uttar Pradesh.

The total active cases in India has fallen below 6 per cent of the overall, the Union Health Ministry said today, calling it a "landmark achievement".  "Demonstrating a landmark achievement, India's Active Cases have fallen below 6% of the Total Cases. The Recovered Cases have leaped past 92% of the cumulative cases."

Delhi recorded over 70 fatalities due to COVID-19 for the third consecutive day on Monday, taking the deaths to 7,060, while 5,023 fresh cases pushed the infection tally in the national capital to over 4.4 lakh, according to a health department bulletin. Seventy-one deaths were recorded in the city, it said.

The Tata Group has launched a COVID-19 test kit that it says will process results more easily and faster than the RT-PCR method considered the gold standard. The nasal swab test, developed jointly by Tata and the government, is also more accurate than the rapid antigen test currently favoured in India, the ministry of science and technology had said.

Brazil on Monday registered 10,917 new cases of coronavirus, totaling 5,590,025, the Health Ministry said. Deaths rose by 231 to 161,106.

Brazil's health regulator said Monday it had suspended clinical trials of a Chinese-developed Covid-19 vaccine after an "adverse incident" involving a volunteer recipient, a blow for one of the most advanced vaccine candidates. The regulator, Anvisa, said in a statement that it had "ruled to interrupt the clinical trial of the CoronaVac vaccine after a serious adverse incident" on October 29.

Scientists have assessed cases of COVID-19 in newborns across the UK, and found that nearly 90 per cent of them had fully recovered, and had been discharged from hospital, an advance which suggests that severe infection in babies is very rare. The study, published in the journal The Lancet Child and Adolescent Health, traced babies less than 29 days old with COVID-19 across the UK, who needed to be admitted into hospital between the beginning of March and end of April.

US President-elect Joe Biden Monday said it is a cause for "hope" that a COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech was 90 per cent effective -- but warned of a long battle still ahead. "I congratulate the brilliant women and men who helped produce this breakthrough and to give us such cause for hope," Biden said in a statement.

The US recorded its 10 millionth case of the coronavirus on Monday, according to a count by Johns Hopkins University, the same day that Pfizer and BioNTech announced their vaccine showed 90 per cent effectiveness. Shortly before 1400 GMT Monday the tracker by the Baltimore-based university showed 10,018,278 cases recorded in the US since the pandemic began, and 237,742 deaths.