(TibetanReview.net, Mar16’21) – Europe is facing a third wave of Covid-19 infections, with Italy imposing strict new restrictions and France considering doing the same. Hungary’s prime minister predicted hospitals this week would be at their most overwhelmed since the start of the pandemic. The spread of coronavirus variants and slow vaccination rates are among the likely factors, reported the New York Times Mar 15.
In India, which is facing its second wave, a parliamentary committee has noted that with less than 1% of the population vaccinated till mid-February, it would take “many years to vaccinate the whole population”, reported the timesofindia.com Mar 16.
India’s home ministry has told the committee, however, that the country’s ongoing vaccination drive was the fastest in the world, that it was at fourth position across the world despite starting around a month later than other countries.
Maharashtra continued to drive the surge in Covid-19 infections in India, accounting for 61% of all fresh cases recorded in the country last week, said another timesofindia.com report Mar 16.
However, at least 10 other states/UTs also showed a significant rise in infections during the week (March 8-14), indicating a wide resurgence of the pandemic in the country, the report noted.
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The latest data from India’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare show that there were 24,492 new Covid-19 cases and 131 new deaths in the country in the past 24 hours as of Mar 16 at 8 AM, taking their cumulative totals to 11,409,831 cases and 158,856 deaths respectively.
A total of 11,027,543, or 96.65%, had recovered while the number of active cases was 223,432, or 1.96% of the total. The case fatality declined to 1.39%.
The latest daily number of new cases, at 24,492, was higher than the daily number of those who had recovered, at 20,191, leading to a jump in the number of active cases by 4,170.
Sixteen states have reported more than 100 new cases in the last 24 hours, namely Maharashtra (15,051), Punjab (1,818), Kerala (1,054), Karnataka (932), Gujarat (890), Tamil Nadu (836), Madhya Pradesh (797), Chattisgarh (645), Haryana (420), Delhi (368), West Bengal (251), Rajasthan (251), Telangana (204), Uttar Pradesh (151), and Chandigarh (148) and Andhra Pradesh (147).
Ten states have reported 3 or more Covid-19 deaths each in the last 24 hours, namely Maharashtra (48), Punjab (27), Kerala (11), Chattisgarh (7), Karnataka (7), Tamil Nadu (4), Delhi (3), West Bengal (3), Haryana (3), and Madhya Pradesh (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 120,285,603 and the deaths 2,662,198, according to the tally of Johns Hopkins University as of 3:56 PM on Mar 16, 2021.
