(TibetanReview.net, Dec02’20) – The UK has become the first country to approve the use of the Pfizer and BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine. Vaccinations are set to begin next week, Health Secretary Matt Hancock was cited as saying early Dec 2. The vaccine was found to be 95% effective at preventing symptomatic Covid-19, the drugmaker had said after clinical trials. The US and the European Union also were vetting the Pfizer shot along with a similar vaccine made by competitor Moderna Inc., reported the timesofindia.com Dec 2.
In India, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare clarified Dec 1 that it never spoke about vaccinating the entire population against the coronavirus. In fact, Indian Council of Medical Research Director General Balram Bhargava said it may not be necessary to vaccinate everyone in the country, reported the scroll.in Dec 1.
Our purpose is to break the chain of viral transmission,” Bhargava has said. “So if we are able to vaccinate a critical mass of people and break that virus transmission, then we may not have to vaccinate the entire population.”
The vaccine developed by British-Swedish pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca and Oxford University is seen as the most promising one for India. It is presently undergoing final stage trial in the country and CEO Adar Poonwalla of the Serum Institute of India which is conducting it has said Nov 28 that his firm was preparing to apply for emergency use of its vaccine in two weeks.
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The latest data from India’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare show that there were 36,604 new cases and 501 new deaths in the country in the past 24 hours as of Dec 2 at 8AM, taking their cumulative totals to 9,499,413 cases and 138,6122 deaths. This was the ninth time this month that the number of new daily cases dropped below 40,000. However, the number fresh cases was 17.6% higher than that the day before, noted the ndtv.com Dec 2.
A total of 8,932,647, or 94.3%, had recovered while the number of active cases was 428,644, or 4.51% of the total. The case fatality rate was 1.45%. These were all improvements over the previous day’s figures.
The latest daily number of new cases, at 36,604, was less than the daily number of those who had recovered, at 43,062, leading to a decline in the number of active cases by 6,959.
The number of active cases remained below five lakh for the 22st successive day after remaining below six lakh for 12 days. Besides, this was also the 25nd consecutive day the number of daily cases reported had remained below 50,000.
India is currently the country with the world’s second highest number of Covid-19 cases and the third highest number of deaths. It is also the country still reporting the highest daily number of new cases after the USA.
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Eight states, namely Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal had each accumulated more than 486,000 cases each in that order.
They were followed by nine other states with more than 207,000 cases each and which included, Odisha, Telangana, Rajasthan,Chattisgarh, Haryana, Bihar, Assam, Gujarat, and Madhya Pradesh in that order.
Three more states/ Union Territories, namely Punjab, Jammu & Kashmir and Jharkhand had reported more than 109,000 cases each so far in that order.
Ten more states/Union Territories, namely Uttarakhand, Goa, Himachal Pradesh, Puducherry, Tripura, Manipur, Chandigarh, Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, and Nagaland reported more than 11,000 cases each in that order.
Besides, there were five other states/Union Territories with a total of more than 3,000 cases each, namely Ladakh, Sikkim, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Mizoram, and Dadra and Nagar Haveli and in that order.
Maharashtra also had the highest cumulative number of deaths at 47,246 (↑95); followed by Karnataka and Tamil Nadu with more than 11,700 deaths each; Delhi with over 9,200 deaths; West Bengal with over 8,400 deaths, Uttar Pradesh with over 7,700 deaths; Andhra Pradesh with over 6,900 deaths; Punjab and Gujarat with more than 4,000 deaths each; Madhya Pradesh with more than 3,200 deaths each; Chattisgarh, Haryana, Rajasthan and Kerala with more than 2,200 deaths each; Odisha, Jammu & Kashmir, Telangana, Bihar, and Uttarakhand with more than 1,200 deaths each; Assam, Jharkhand, Goa, Himachal Pradesh, Puducherry, Tripura, Manipur, Chandigarh, Ladakh, and Meghalaya with between 981 and 112 deaths each, and so on in that order.
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After remaining unchaged for two days, the total number of Covid-19 cases among Tibetans in India, Nepal and Bhutan had increased to 1,315 (↑17), of whom 143 were active, 1,138 had recovered and 34 (↑1) had died, according to the latest tally of the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) as of Dec 2.
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Across the world the number of Covid-19 cases had totaled 63,930,654 and the deaths 1,481,580, according to the tally of Johns Hopkins University as of 1:56 PM on Dec 2, 2020.