Covid LIVE: India's cumulative vaccination coverage at 590-mn mark

Coronavirus LIVE updates: Maharashtra recorded 4,141 fresh Covid-19 cases, 4,780 discharges, and 145 deaths in the last 24 hours. Stay tuned for corona-related news

1:47 AM

Covid watch: One more athlete tests positive before Paralympics opening

Thirteen more persons including an athlete have tested positive for Covid-19 on the eve of the opening ceremony for the Tokyo Paralympic Games on Monday. Among those that tested positive for the virus in the last 24 hours ending on Monday afternoon, there were four from among Games-related personnel and seven Tokyo 2020 contractors. One Tokyo 2020 employee too has returned a positive report.

 

Sunday's one case takes to five the total number of athletes to test positive.

 

The addition of 13 persons on Monday took the total tally of Covid positive tests here to 142 since they started testing for the Paralympic Games on August 12.

11:58 PM

Andhra Pradesh records 1K more Covid cases, 12 deaths

Andhra Pradesh on Monday recorded 1,002 new Covid cases, taking its overall tally beyond 20 lakh, even as its active caseload dropped to 14,159. As many as 1,508 more persons recovered from the disease in the past 24 hours, taking the state's total number of recoveries over 19.7 lakh. East Godavari district reported the highest number of cases at 265, followed by Kadapa 132, Nellore 118, Chittoor 113, Prakasam 86, Krishna 74, Guntur 64, Visakhapatnam 54, Vizianagaram 35, West Godavari 24, Srikakulam 19, Anantapur 11, and Kurnool seven.

 

East Godavari tops the chart with more than 2.8 lakh cases, followed by Chittoor with 2.3 lakh.

 

Meanwhile, 12 more persons succumbed to the virus in the past 24 hours, taking the state's overall Covid death toll to 13,735.

10:39 PM

USFDA gives full approval to Pfizer-BioNTech's COVID-19 vaccine

The US health regulator on Monday gave full approval to Pfizer-BioNTech's COVID-19 vaccine, a key milestone for public health that can instill further confidence in consumers and also spur authorities to make vaccinations mandatory.

 

The US Food and Drug Administration (USFDA) had earlier in December 2020 given emergency use authorisation (EAU) for the vaccine, developed by US-based Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech. More than 200 million Pfizer doses have been administered in the US, and hundreds of millions more worldwide, since December.

 

"Today the US Food and Drug Administration approved the first COVID-19 vaccine. The vaccine has been known as the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine, and will now be marketed as Comirnaty, for the prevention of COVID-19 disease in individuals 16 years of age and older," the US health regulator said in a statement.

9:50 PM

Mumbai sees 226 COVID-19 cases, 4 deaths, 297 recoveries

Mumbai on Monday reported 226 COVID-19 cases and four deaths, taking the tally to 7,41,391 and the toll to 15,951, a civic official said. The number of tests conducted in the last 24 hours stood at 24,828, which was the lowest this month, the official pointed out, adding that a total of 89,47,332 tests had been conducted here so far.

 

The recovery count rose by 297 on Monday to touch 7,20,199, he said.

 

The city had, on Sunday, reported 294 cases and one death, which was the lowest since the pandemic broke out in March last year.

 

Slums and chawls remained free of containment zones, which are declared if an area has five cases, for the ninth consecutive day, while the number of sealed buildings in the metropolis was 19, Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation data showed. Mumbai's case doubling time had dipped below the 2000-day mark and stood at 1,983 days, while the average growth rate of cases between August 16 and 22 rose to 0.04 per cent from 0.03 per cent, civic data revealed.

9:17 PM

Khattar to set up panel to probe hospitals' negligence in treating Covid patients

Haryana Chief Minister M L Khattar on Monday told the state assembly that his government will set up a panel to probe possible negligence by hospitals in treating Covid patients.

 

The chief minister made the announcement while seeking to assure the House that no death due to oxygen shortage had been recorded in the state.

 

Khattar sought to assure the assembly after the opposition Congress, during Zero Hour, raised the issue of deaths in parts of the state allegedly due to oxygen shortage during the peak of the second Covid wave earlier this year.

 

Former Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, while training guns on Khattar, alleged, Leader of the House has misled the Assembly. He said not a single death took place due to lack of oxygen.

 

He said it had been widely reported in the media earlier that deaths in hospitals in Gurgaon, Rewari and Hisar did take place due to oxygen shortage.

8:47 PM

India's cumulative vaccination coverage at 590-mn mark

India’s Covid-19 vaccination coverage has crossed 58.82 Crore (58,82,21,623) as per the 7 pm provisional report today. More than 56 lakh (56,10,116) Vaccine Doses have been administered today, as per the 7 pm provisional report.

 

 

8:33 PM

Maharashtra reports 3,643 fresh Covid-19 cases

8:33 PM

Mumbai reports 226 new coronavirus cases

8:16 PM

Containment zones reduced to 228 in Delhi; none in central, northeast districts

There are 228 "actual containment zones" in the national capital while the central and northeast districts have none, according to Covid data of the Delhi government.

 

Containment zones are divided into two categories - "scaled down but not de-contained" and "active containment zones", the sum of which is termed "actual containment zones".

8:10 PM

No RT-PCR test report for fully jabbed air travellers arriving in Chhattisgarh

The Chhattisgarh government on Monday exempted fully vaccinated air passengers arriving in the state from carrying a negative RT-PCR coronavirus test report, officials said.

 

7:43 PM

No new Covid-19 case found in Dharavi for eighth time in August

For the eighth time this month, the Dharavi slum colony in Mumbai didn't report any new Covid-19 case in a day on Monday, a civic official said.

 

The last time Dharavi didn't record any new case in a day was on August 20.

 

Currently, Dharavi has only 11 active cases. Of the 7,005 infections recorded, 6,596 patients have already recovered and been discharged, the official said.

7:34 PM

Nepal receives over 500,000 AstraZeneca vaccines from Japan: Official

Nepal has received over 5 lakh doses of AstraZeneca vaccine from Japan to help the Himalayan nation boost its vaccination drive to contain the contagious coronavirus spread, a senior official said on Monday.

 

This is the last batch of the total 1.6 million doses the government of Japan had pledged to the Nepal government through COVAX, a United Nations-backed international vaccine-distribution scheme.

7:24 PM

USFDA grants full approval to Pfizer vaccine

The US Food and Drug Administration said on Monday it has given full approval to the Covid-19 vaccine from Pfizer Inc and German partner BioNTech SE.

6:52 PM

Centre making efforts to boost Covid-19 vaccination: Kishan Reddy

The Centre is making various efforts to boost COVID-19 vaccination in the country, including trying to enhance procurement of raw material from other countries to increase production, Union Tourism Minister G Kishan Reddy said on Monday.

 

Stressing that vaccination and following COVID-19 protocols like wearing masks are the ways to check the spread of the virus, he told reporters here that some people wondered why vaccines are not easily available.

 

A vaccine (ready for use) comes out of a factory more than 100 days after the raw material concerned enters its premises, he said.

6:51 PM

Goa reports 57 new Covid-19 cases, one death, 80 recoveries

Goa's coronavirus caseload went up by 57 and reached 1,73,221 on Monday, while 80 patients recovered from the infection, a state health department official said.

 

The death toll rose to 3,186 after one more patient succumbed to the disease during the day, he said.