India Coronavirus Dispatch: 76 countries express interest in CoWin

Two new vaccine testing labs set up, Delhi sees a sharp dip in Covid funerals in June, and more-news relevant to India's fight against the pandemic

Nearly 40,000 fresh cases reported

India reported 39,796 fresh coronavirus infections on Monday, taking the cumulative caseload to 30.5 million, according to central health ministry data. The country saw 723 deaths due to the pandemic, taking the death toll to 402,728. The active caseload is at 482,071, while the total recoveries have surged to 29.7 million. As many as 352.8 million vaccine shots have been administered since the nationwide inoculation programme kicked off on January 16. Of these, 1.4 million were given on Sunday. Read more

76 countries want to use India’s CoWin

The central government is planning to share CoWin—India's digital platform for administering Covid vaccines— as a product “licensed by the central government”, which will be available to all “interested countries for free, until perpetuity”, a report in ThePrint said. The only condition would be that the software should not be allowed to be used as a platform for commercial use or repackaged to be sold, said Dr R S Sharma, chairperson of the Empowered Committee for the administration of the Covid-19 vaccine. “The Centre has received interest from 76 countries thus far,” he said. Read more

Even monkeys used in Covaxin trial were ‘made in India’

While many industries such as textiles, pharma, and electronics have been the centre of attention in the 'atmanirbhar' conversation in the aftermath of the nationwide Covid lockdown, the pandemic may have lead to a different kind of self-sufficiency, a report in ThePrint said. As importing monkeys for animal studies of Bharat Biotech's Covaxin was not possible during the lockdown, indigenous rhesus monkeys (macaques) were used instead. For this, special permission from the Maharashtra forest department was taken. China, incidentally, is among the biggest suppliers in the world of research monkey, the report said. Read more

Two new vaccine testing labs set up

The central government has set up two new labs to speed up the testing and pre-release certification of Covid-19 vaccines, a report in The Indian Express said. The labs have been set up by the Department of Biotechnology at its autonomous research institutes — the National Centre for Cell Science (NCCS), Pune, and the National Institute of Animal Biotechnology (NIAB), Hyderabad. Both Pune and Hyderabad are key vaccine manufacturing hubs. While Covishield-maker Serum Institute of India is headquartered in Pune, Bharat Biotech, which makes Covaxin, is based out of Hyderabad, the report said. Read more

Delhi sees sharp dip in Covid funerals in June

Only 466 funerals adhering to Covid protocols took place in June, which was less than 5 per cent of those carried out in the prior month, a report in The Indian Express said. The steep drop coincides with the rapid decline in cases after the Delhi administration imposed stringent lockdown curbs for several weeks. In May, Delhi saw 9,324 Covid protocol funerals — the highest since the pandemic began. Not a single day in June saw more than 50 such funerals, in stark contrast to April and May, where almost 300 were seen per day. Read more