(TibetanReview.net, Feb20’21) – New Covid-19 cases had fallen globally for the fifth consecutive week, but the world is still not out of the woods and now is not the time to let the guard down, reported China’s official Xinhua news agency Feb 19, citing a Feb 18 press briefing from senior officials of the World Health Organization (WHO). It cited WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus as saying that last week saw the lowest number of reported weekly cases since Oct 2020.
Meanwhile in India, cases have started rising again, with the daily new cases crossing 14,000 this morning, the highest in 27 days, reported the timesofindia.com Feb 20. The timesofindia.com daily totals are based on official reports, which differ marginally from those reported by India’s Ministry of Health.
Five states – Kerala, Maharashtra, Punjab, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh – have recorded an “upsurge” in daily new cases, reported the indianexpress.com Feb 20, citing the country’s Health Ministry Feb 20. Kerala and Maharashtra have continued to report high number of daily new cases.
The ministry has said the country had vaccinated more than 1 crore (1,01,88,007) people so far.
***
Meanwhile, the latest data from India’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare show that there were 13,993 new Covid-19 cases and 101 new deaths in the country in the past 24 hours as of Feb 20 at 8 AM, taking their cumulative totals to 10,977,387 cases and 156,212 deaths respectively.
A total of 10,678,048, or 97.27%, had recovered while the number of active cases was 139,542, or 1.27% of the total. The case fatality remained at 1.42%. The percentage of the recovered has seen a decline over the previous day’s figure.
The latest daily number of new cases, at 13,993, was more than the daily number of those who had recovered, at 10,307, leading to an increase in the number of active cases by 3,585.
Twelve states – same as yesterday – have reported more than 100 new cases in the last 24 hours, namely Maharashtra (6,112), Kerala (4,505), Tamil Nadu (448), Karnataka (386), Chattisgarh (259), Punjab (383), Gujarat (266), Madhya Pradesh (297), West Bengal (194), Telangana (157), Delhi (158), and Uttar Pradesh (102).
Five states have reported 5 or more Covid-19 deaths in the last 24 hours, namely Maharashtra (44), Kerala (15), Punjab (8), Tamil Nadu (7), Karnataka (5). The rest of the states have reported 3 or less deaths.
India is currently the country with the world’s second highest number of Covid-19 cases and the fourth highest number of deaths in cumulative numbers.
***
The cumulative number of Covid-19 cases among Tibetans in India, Nepal and Bhutan has remained unchanged at 1,530. Of them 1,458 had recovered, 31 were active and 41 had died, according to the tally of the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) as of Feb 20.
***
Across the world the number of Covid-19 cases totaled 110,796,397 and the deaths 2,453,927, according to the tally of Johns Hopkins University as of 3:54 PM on Feb 20, 2021.
