India launches world’s largest Covid-19 inoculation drive as global death toll crosses 2 million

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India launches world’s largest Covid-19 inoculation drive. (Photo courtesy: PTI)

(TibetanReview.net, Jan16’21) – As the global coronavirus death toll crossed the 2 million mark, India, which still reports high number of new cases daily despite months-long continued improvement reports, launched the world’s largest inoculation drive this morning.

A total of 3 crore will be vaccinated in the first phase, followed by 30 crore in the second phase, said Prime Minister Narendra D Modi as he launched the drive.

Experts said it is the right time for vaccination as this can stop a 2nd wave, reported the timesofindia.com Jan 16.

Those currently being vaccinated are healthcare and other frontline workers. They will be followed by vaccination of 30 crore people aged above 50 as well as those aged below 50 having co-morbidities. Two doses are needed, with the second one required to be taken after a gap of around a month.

The latest data from India’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare show that there were 15,158 new cases and 175 new Covid-19 deaths in the country in the past 24 hours as of Jan 16 at 8AM, taking their cumulative totals to 10,542,841 cases and 152,092 deaths. Both the daily numbers were less than that reported yesterday.

A total of 10,179,715, or 96.56%, had recovered while the number of active cases was 211,033, or 2.0% of the total. The case fatality rate remained at 1.44%. The percentage figures were mostly improvement over the previous day’s percentage figures.

The latest daily number of new cases, at 15,158, was less than the daily number of those who had recovered, at 16,977, leading to a decrease in the number of active cases by 1,994.

The country’s fifth worst-hit state of Kerala continued to report the highest daily new infections at 5,624, followed successively by the country’s worst-hit state of Maharashtra (3,145), second-worst hit Karnataka (708), eighth worst-hit West Bengal (623), fourth worst-hit Tamil Nadu (621), Gujarat (535), Chattisgarh (521), seventh-worst hit Uttar Pradesh (472), Madhya Pradesh (429), … Himachal Pradesh (51), and so on.

The 175 daily new deaths included 45 from Maharashtra; 23 from Kerala; 16 from West Bengal; 15 from Uttar Pradesh; 12 from Punjab; 10 from Delhi; 7 each from Chattisgarh and Haryana; 6 each from Madhya Pradesh and Uttarakhand; 5 from Tamil Nadu; 3 each from Gujarat and Karnataka; 2 from Bihar; and so on.

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 ucnhanged 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 16.

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Across the world the number of Covid-19 cases totaled 93,900,264 and the deaths 2,010,328, according to the tally of Johns Hopkins University as of 1:52 PM on Jan 16, 2021.

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