(TibetanReview.net, Mar01’21) – New global Covid-19 cases have been dropping for six consecutive weeks while in India daily increase in new cases to more than 16,000 had been reported for the fourth straight day before falling below it this morning, according to edition.cnn.com Feb 28 and India’s health ministry data Mar 1.
India began its vaccination drive on Jan 16 targeting the inoculation of 30 million healthcare and other frontline workers but has struggled with hesitancy among them to take the jab, succeeding in giving 14.3 million shots so far, noted the ndtv.com Mar 1.
In an effort to outpace the lurking spike in cases, India launched the next phase of its mass inoculation drive this morning, targeting people over 60 and those above 45 with specified comorbidities. The aim is to vaccinate 300 million people, or about 2.3% of the population, by August in this second phase. Prime Minister Narendra Modi received his first dose at Delhi’s premier All India Institutes of Medical Sciences in the morning.
The latest data from India’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare show that there were 15,510 new Covid-19 cases and 106 new deaths in the country in the past 24 hours as of Mar 01 at 8 AM, taking their cumulative totals to 11,112,241 cases and 157,157 deaths respectively. The daily numbers of new cases and deaths were lower than those reported the day before.
A total of 10,786,457 or 97.02%, had recovered while the number of active cases was 168,627, or 1.52% of the total. The case fatality was at 1.41%. Thus, while the fatality rate underwent a slight reduction, the percentage figures for both the recoveries and active cases have again worsened significantly over those of the previous day.
The latest daily number of new cases, at 15,510, was more than the daily number of those who had recovered, at 11,288, leading to increase in the number of active cases by 4,116.
Fifteen states – one more than yesterday – have reported more than 100 new cases in the last 24 hours, namely Maharashtra (8,293), Kerala (3,254), Punjab (579), Karnataka (521), Tamil Nadu (479), Gujarat (407), Madhya Pradesh (363), Delhi (197), West Bengal (192), Haryana (174), Rajasthan (156), Telangana (116), Chattisgarh (141), Andhra Pradesh (117), and Uttar Pradesh (100).
Five states have reported 3 or more Covid-19 deaths in the last 24 hours, namely Maharashtra (62), Kerala (15), Punjab (7), Karnataka (5), and Tamil Nadu (3). The rest of the states have reported 2 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.
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Across the world the number of Covid-19 cases totaled 114,078,673 and the deaths 2,531,004, according to the tally of Johns Hopkins University as of 12:54 PM on Mar 01, 2021.
