(TibetanReview.net, Jul16’20) –Going by the current national trend, a worse case Covid-19 scenario projection made by a team at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) estimates that India would have a few more than 3.5 million cases, of which 1 million will be active, by Sep 1, reported timesofindia.com Jul 16.
No peak is predicted for India until the end of Mar 2021, at which time there will be around 8.2 million active cases and still growing, 2.8 million deaths and 61.8 million total cases.
However, help could be on the way. AstraZeneca – a global biopharmaceutical firm connected with the University of Oxford – will soon announce breakthrough results on its pursuit for a Covid-19 vaccine, reported Reuters Jul 16.
The Oxford Covid-19 vaccine, backed by Indian ICMR, is also being trialled and mass-produced by Serum India Institute based in Pune, the world’s largest producer of vaccine doses by volume, the report noted.
AstraZeneca is already mass producing two billion doses of the Oxford Covid-19 vaccine candidate. Oxford’s vaccine development is months ahead of its counterparts and is expected to be ready by Sep-Oct 2020.
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The need for the vaccine is all the more acute in India where the number of new daily infections zoomed past the 30,000 mark for the first time on Jul 15, with the cumulative total being expected to hit one million cases in a day or two.
The country currently has the world’s third highest number of infections and eighth highest number of deaths from the global pandemic that was unleashed by China in late 2019.
The tally of India’s Ministry of Health show that there had been 32,695 new cases – the highest so far – and 606 new deaths over the past 24 hours as of Jul 16 at 8AM, taking their totals to 968,876 cases and 24,915 deaths.
A total of 612,815, or 63.25 per cent, had recovered, so that the number of active cases was 331,146.
The daily number of new cases, at 32,695, was substantially more than the daily number of recoveries at 20,783.
The 12 worst-hit states with more than 20,000 cases were led by Maharashtra with a total of 275,640 cases after 7,975 new cases were reported in the past 24 hours, followed by Tamil Nadu with 151,820 (↑4,496) cases, Delhi with 116,993 (↑1,647) cases, Karnataka 47,253 (↑3,176), Gujarat with 44,552 (↑915) cases, Uttar Pradesh 41,383 (↑1,659), Telangana 39,342 (↑1,597), Andhra Pradesh 35,451 (↑2,432), West Bengal 34,427 (↑1,589), Rajasthan 26,437 (↑866), Haryana 23,306 (↑678) cases, and Bihar 20,612 (↑1,328).
There were six other states with more than 5,000 cases: Madhya Pradesh 19,643 (↑638); Assam 18,666 (↑859); Odisha 14,898 (↑618); Jammu & Kashmir 11,666 (↑493), Kerala 9,553 (↑623), and Punjab 8,799 (↑288).
Besides, there were nine other states/ Union Territories with more than 1,000 cases, namely Chattisgarh 4,539 (↑160), Jharkhand 4,320 (↑229), Uttarakhand 3,785 (↑99), Goa 2,951 (↑198), Tripura 2,2680 (↑98), Manipur 1,700 (↑28), Puducherry 1,596 (↑65), Himachal Pradesh 1,341 (↑32), and Ladakh 1,142 (↑49).
Finally there were seven other states/ Union Territories with less than 1,000 cases, namely Nagaland 902 (↑6), Chandigarh 625 (↑25), Arunachal Pradesh 462 (↑0), Meghalaya 346 (↑28) cases, Mizoram 238 (↑0), Sikkim 220 (↑11), and Andaman and Nicobar Islands 176 (↑10).
Lakshadweep and Dadra Nagar Haveli remain the only States /Union Territories without any Covid-19 case.
Maharashtra also had the most number of deaths at 10,928 (↑233), followed by Delhi 3,487 (↑41), Gujarat 2,079 (↑10), Tamil Nadu 2,167 (↑68), West Bengal 1,000 (↑20), Uttar Pradesh 1,012 (↑29), Karnataka 928 (↑86), Madhya Pradesh 682 (↑9), Rajasthan 530 (↑5), Telangana 386 (↑11), Andhra Pradesh 452 (↑44), Haryana 319 (↑7), Punjab 221 (↑8), Jammu & Kashmir 206 (↑11), Bihar 180 (↑6), Odisha 77 (↑3), Uttarakhand 50 (↑0), Assam 46 (↑6), Kerala 35 (↑1), Jharkhand 38 (↑2), Chattisgarh 20 (↑0), Puducherry 21 (↑3), Goa 18 (↑0), Himachal Pradesh 11 (↑0), Chandigarh 11 (↑1), Arunachal Pradesh 3 (↑0), Tripura 3 (↑1), Meghalaya 2 (↑0), and Ladakh 1 (↑0).
Five States/ Union Territory with Covid-19 cases have reported no deaths so far.
(Source: https://www.mohfw.gov.in/)
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Jul 15 was the fifth consecutive day Delhi reported fresh cases in the range of 1,000-2,000, compared to higher highers in preceding days. The number of active cases currently stands at 17,807, down from 18,664 on Jul 14, reported timesofindia.com Jul 16.
Delhi reported 857 new active cases compared to 2,663 recoveries in the past 24 hours. Almost all other states have more new active cases than new recoveries in the past 24 hours. Tamil Nadu is the only other state among the worst hit to have more recoveries than new infections in the past 24 hours.
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Across the world the total number of Covid-19 cases had surged past the 13.56 million mark to reach 13,565,868 while a total of 584,385 had died as of Jul 16 at 02:05:06 PM, according to the Dashboard maintained by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University.
There were 242,338 new cases and 5,757 new deaths during the past 28 hours or so across 188 countries and regions.
The countries with the most number of reported Covid-19 cases thus far were the US (3,499,398), Brazil (1,966,748), India (936,181), Russia (738,787), Peru (333,867), Chile (333,867), Mexico (311,486), UK (968,857), … China (85,247).
The countries with the most number of Covid-19 deaths were the US (137,419), Brazil (75,366), the UK (45,138), Mexico (36,906), Italy (34,997), France (30,123), Spain (28,413), India (24,914) … China (4,644).
(Source: https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html)
