Coronavirus active cases have increased by 11,398 in last 24 hours.
India added 46,164 new Covid cases over the last 24 hours - a 22 per cent jump - while deaths from COVID-19 rose to 607.The country's overall case load now stands at 3.25 crore, while total fatalities are at 4.36 lakhs, according to the government.
Kerala witnessed a nearly 30 per cent jump as it reported 31,445 cases in the past 24 hours. The southern state recorded 215 deaths along with a test positivity rate of 19.03 per cent.
Maharashtra, the worst-hit state in the country, reported 5,031 new infections and 216 fatalities in 24 hours.
The daily positivity rate remains less than 3 per cent for the last 31 days and is presently at 2.58 per cent. Active cases constitute 1.03% of total cases, the lowest since March 2020, while the national COVID-19 recovery rate stands 97.63 per cent, the Union Health Ministry said.
India has administered over 60 crore doses of the anti-coronavirus vaccines so far. The country is now only behind China in terms of the number of doses administered so far, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins. At the current rate of vaccination, 32% of the population will be vaccinated by the year-end.
Children between the age of 12 to 17 years will be vaccinated against COVID-19 in October, chief of the advisory group of immunization said. Dr NK Arora, Chief of National Technical Advisory Group on Immunization (NTAGI), also said that chances of children facing serious health complications due to the virus were very unlikely as he suggested reopening of schools.
Dr Arora's comments come amid concerns that the third wave is more likely to affect children more than adults. "Paediatric facilities - doctors and equipment, like ventilators and ambulances, are nowhere close to what may be required in case a large number of children become infected," the National Institute of Disaster Management has indicated (NIDM), which operates under the Home Ministry, said as part of a report on recommendations to prep for the third wave.
ZyCoV-D, the indigenously developed world's first DNA-based needle-free COVID-19 vaccine, has received Emergency Use Authorisation on August 20 making it the first vaccine to be administered in the age group of 12-18 years, in addition to adults in the country.
India should now focus on vaccinating as many people as possible to curb the spread of Covid and the idea of booster doses can wait, AIIMS chief Randeep Guleria said. The AIIMS chief also said that Sero Survey suggested that there may not be as many coronavirus cases in a likely third Covid wave if vaccinations continue in strength.
India's Covid tally had crossed the 20-lakh mark on August 7, 2020, 30 lakh on August 23, 40 lakh on September 5 and 50 lakh on September 16. It went past 60 lakh on September 28, 70 lakh on October 11, crossed 80 lakh on October 29, 90 lakh on November 20 and surpassed the one-crore mark on December 19. India crossed the grim milestone of two crore on May 4 and three crore on June 23.
Coronavirus cases worldwide have surpassed the 200 million-mark. Cases are rising in about one-third of the world's countries, many of which have not even given half their population a first dose.
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