The Union Health Ministry on Friday announced that India’s recovery rate from COVID-19 has improved significantly as the active caseload has declined by about 83 per cent since the highest reported peak.
The ministry also confirmed that around 30.79 crore COVID-19 vaccine doses have been administered to people so far, out of which the maximum number of doses have been received by 45+ category.
During a press briefing in New Delhi, Health Ministry’s joint secretary Lav Agarwal said, “In the week of May 4, 531 districts of the country were reporting more than 100 cases. In the week of June 2, it fell down to 262 districts. Right now only 125 districts in the country are reporting more than 100 cases.”
The average daily new cases witness a continued decline from 3,89,803 cases between May 1 and May 7 to 53,093 cases between June 19 and 25, he added.
Before confirming the country’s recovery rate at 96.7 per cent, Lav Agarwal said that India’s active caseload (6,12,868) has declined by about 83 per cent since the highest reported peak of 37.45 lakh active cases on May 10.
Stressing on the importance of vaccination, Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) DG Dr Balram Bharagava iterated that vaccine can be given to pregnant women as it is useful for them.
As far as the vaccination of children is concerned, he said that there’s only one country which is giving vaccine to children at the moment. Whether very small children will ever need vaccine, is still a question. Till such time, we have more data on vaccination of children, we won’t be in a position to vaccinate children at large, he added.
“However, we have started a small study on children between the age of 2-18 years and we shall have results of that by September or so. However, the international jury is still not out and they are still debating whether children need to be vaccinated. We have seen some complications in the US, said Dr Balram Bhargava.
Talking about the vaccine’s effect on the new ‘Delta Plus’ variant, Dr Bhargava said, “Covishield and Covaxin work against the variants of SARS CoV 2 – alpha, beta, gama as well as delta. Delta Plus is present in 12 countries; 48 cases have been identified in India but more importantly, they have been very localised.”
He then announced, “This virus has also been isolated and cultured now. We are doing the same test that we have done for alpha, beta, gamma and delta. Looking at the laboratory test to check the vaccine effect and we should have the results in about 7 to 10 days time.”
Ever since the vaccination against coronavirus started, around 30.79 crore people have been vaccinated with anti-COVID vaccines. As on June 25, 1.74 crore healthcare workers, 2.65 crore frontline workers, 7.64 crore people aged 18-44 and 18.76 crore people aged above 45 years have taken the jab.
