As global Covid-19 infections hit a new high, Russia claims to have the first vaccine ready for production

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Russia has sneaked past everyone else to announce on Jul 12 that its clinical trials for a Covid-19 vaccine were completed successfully and the vaccine was ready for production. (Photo courtesy: Indian Express)

(TibetanReview.net, Jul13’20) – The World Health Organization has on Jul 12 reported a record increase in global coronavirus cases, with the total rising by 230,370 in 24 hours; the previous WHO record was 228,102 on Jul 10. The biggest increases were from the United States, Brazil, India and South Africa, according to the WHO’s daily report.

Meanwhile Russia has sneaked past everyone else to announce on Jul 12 that its clinical trials for a Covid-19 vaccine were completed successfully and the vaccine was ready for production.

“The safety of the vaccine is confirmed. It corresponds to the safety of those vaccines that are currently on the market,” sputniknews.com Jul 12 quoted Alexander Lukashev, director of the Institute of Medical Parasitology, Tropical and Vector-Borne Diseases at Sechenov University, as saying.

Announcing the news, Vadim Tarasov, the director of the Institute for Translational Medicine and Biotechnology of the University, has said  the first group of volunteers would be discharged on Jul 15 and the second on Jul 20.

However, Lukashev has said a further vaccine development plan was already being determined by the developer, including the complexity of the epidemiological situation with the virus and the possibility of scaling up production, which appears to suggests that the vaccine is not about to hit the market yet.

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Meanwhile, India has reported yet another record high number of new infections in a single day and more than 26,000 for the fourth consecutive day.

India’s increasing positivity rate (the number of people found to be infected with the virus from among those tested) indicates that the presence of the disease in the community is fairly widespread, and is probably getting transmitted at a fast pace. But it is arising from the fact that the testing is still restrictive, reported indianexpress.com Jul 13. The death rate has, however, kept falling, the report added.

The tally of India’s Ministry of Health shows that there had been 28,701 new cases and 500 new deaths over the past 24 hours as of Jul 13 at 8AM, taking their totals to 878,254 cases and 23,174 deaths.

A total of 553,471, or 63.01 per cent, had recovered, so that the number of active cases was 301,609.

India is currently the country with the third highest number of Covid-19 cases and the eighth most number of deaths from the China-unleashed global pandemic.

The 11 worst-hit states with more than 20,000 cases were led by Maharashtra with a total of 254,427 cases after 7,827 new cases were reported in the past 24 hours, followed by Tamil Nadu with 138,470 (↑4,244) cases, Delhi with 112,494 (↑1,573) cases, Gujarat with 41,820 (↑879) cases, Karnataka 38,843 (↑2,627), Uttar Pradesh 36,476 (↑1,384), Telangana 34,671 (↑1,269), West Bengal 30,013 (↑1,560), Andhra Pradesh 29,168 (↑1,933), Rajasthan 24,392 (↑644), and Haryana 21,240 (↑658) cases.

Seven other states with more than 5,000 cases were: Madhya Pradesh 17,632 (↑431); Bihar 16,642 (↑1,269); Assam 16,071 (↑535); Odisha 13,121 (↑595); Jammu & Kashmir 10,513 (↑357), Kerala 7,873 (↑435), and Punjab 7,821 (↑234).

Besides, there were nine other states/ Union Territories with more than 1,000 cases, namely Chattisgarh 4,059 (↑162), Jharkhand 3,756 (↑143), Uttarakhand 3,537 (↑120), Goa 2,453 (↑85), Tripura 2,054 (↑105), Manipur 1,609 (↑16), Puducherry 1,418 (↑81), Himachal Pradesh 1,213 (↑31), and Ladakh 1,086 (↑9).

And then there were seven other states/ Union Territories with less than 1,000 cases, namely Nagaland 774 (↑26), Chandigarh 559 (↑4), Arunachal Pradesh 359 (↑18), Mizoram 231 (↑4), Meghalaya 306 (↑99) cases, Andaman and Nicobar Islands 163 (↑0), and Sikkim 153 (↑2).

Lakshadweep and Dadra Nagar Haveli remain the only States /Union Territories without any Covid-19 case.

Maharashtra also had the most number of deaths at 10,289 (↑173), followed by Delhi 3,371 (↑37), Gujarat 2,045 (↑13), Tamil Nadu 1,966 (↑68), Uttar Pradesh 934 (↑21), West Bengal 932 (↑26), Karnataka 684 (↑71), Madhya Pradesh 653 (↑9), Rajasthan 510 (↑7), Telangana 356 (↑8), Andhra Pradesh 328 (↑19), Haryana 301 (↑4), Punjab 199 (↑4), Jammu & Kashmir 179 (↑10), Bihar 143 (↑12), Odisha 64 (↑3), Uttarakhand 47 (↑1), Assam 35 (↑0), Kerala 31 (↑2), Jharkhand 30 (↑7), Chattisgarh 19 (↑2), Puducherry 18 (↑0), Goa 14 (↑2), Himachal Pradesh 11 (↑0), Chandigarh 8 (↑1), Arunachal Pradesh 2 (↑0), Meghalaya 2 (↑0), Tripura 2 (↑0), and Ladakh 1 (↑0).

Five States/ Union Territory with Covid-19 cases have reported no deaths so far.

(Source: https://www.mohfw.gov.in/)

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Across the world the total number of Covid-19 cases had surged close to the 13 million mark to reach 12,910,357 while a total of 569,128 had died as of Jul 13 at 10:13:04 AM, according to the Dashboard maintained by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University.

There were 181,391new cases and 3,777 new deaths during the past 20 hours or so across 188 countries and regions.

The countries with the most number of reported Covid-19 cases thus far were the US (3,304,942), Brazil (1,864,681), India (878,254), Russia (726,036), Peru (326,326), Chile (315,041), Mexico (299,750), UK (291,154),  … China (85,117).

The countries with the most number of Covid-19 deaths were the US (135,205), Brazil (72,100), the UK (44,904), Mexico (35,006), Italy (34,954), France (30,007), Spain (28,403), India (23,174) … China (4,641).

(Source: https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html)

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