(TibetanReview.net, Jan18’21) – India vaccinated around 64% of 3,16,375 planned beneficiaries on the first two days of the immunisation drive against Covid-19 that was rolled out on Jan 16. The government plans to initially vaccinate 3 crore health and frontline workers and then move on to 27 crore “priority” population groups including those above 50 years age and those younger but with severe co-morbidities, reported the timesofindia.com Jan 18.
Inida’s Health Ministry said a total of 447 adverse events following immunization (AEFI) had been reported from across the country over the past two days, with just three of them needing hospital care, said timesofindia.com Jan 17. Most of the AEFI reports were stated to be minor including fever, headache and nausea.
Covishield, developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca and manufactured by Serum Institute of India is being administered as a vaccine with a record of proven safety and efficacy.
However, Bharat Biotech’s COVID-19 vaccine Covaxin, developed in collaboration with the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), was granted restricted emergency use approval under the clinical trial mode. This means that people who receive the doses will have to sign a three-page informed consent form, and will also be monitored for any serious side effects, noted news18.com Jan 18.
The vaccine is still in final-stage trial and has been granted approval for emergency use. Beneficiaries were reluctant to sign the consent form in all three states – Bihar, Tamil Nadu and Telangana – where it was launched, the report said.
Meanwhile this has been the 10th consecutive week of decline in Covid-19 cases in the country and 17th week of falling numbers out of the 18 weeks since the pandemic peaked in the country, reported the timesofindia.com Jan 18.
Besides, during the current week (Jan 11-17), a little more than 1,05,000 new coronavirus cases were detected, the lowest weekly count since Jun 15-21, said another timesofindia.com report Jan 18.
The weekly death toll too dropped sharply by an identical 16.6%, the report said.
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Meanwhile the latest data from India’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare show that there were 13,1788 new cases and 145 new Covid-19 deaths in the country in the past 24 hours as of Jan 18 at 8AM, taking their cumulative totals to 10,571,773 cases and 152,419 deaths.
A total of 10,211,342, or 96.59%, had recovered while the number of active cases was 208,012, or 1.97% of the total. The case fatality rate remained at 1.44%. The percentage figures were mostly an improvement over the previous day’s percentage figures.
The latest daily number of new cases, at 13,788, was less than the daily number of those who had recovered, at 14,457, leading to a decrease in the number of active cases by 814.
The country’s fifth worst-hit state with the highest number of active cases of Kerala continued to report the highest daily new infections at 5,005, followed successively by the country’s worst-hit state with second highest number of active cases of Maharashtra (3,081), second-worst hit Karnataka (745), eighth worst-hit West Bengal (605), fourth worst-hit Tamil Nadu (589), Gujarat (518), seventh-worst hit Uttar Pradesh (391), Madhya Pradesh (355), Chattisgarh (323), … Himachal Pradesh (70), and so on.
The 145 daily new deaths included 50 from Maharashtra; 21 from Kerala; and 12 from West Bengal. The rest of the states reported from 8 to no deaths, with Himachal Pradesh reporting 2 deaths.
India is currently the country with the world’s second highest number of Covid-19 cases and the third highest number of deaths in cumulative numbers.
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The cumulative total of Covid-19 cases among Tibetans in India, Nepal and Bhutan has remained unchanged for the third day at 1,479. Of them 1,411 had recovered, 31 were active and 37 had died, according to the tally of the Central Tibetan Administration Jan 18.
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Across the world the number of Covid-19 cases totaled 95,091,565 and the deaths 2,031,948, according to the tally of Johns Hopkins University as of 2:52 PM on Jan 18, 2021.
