TLTP
NEW DELHI
India surged past 10 million coronavirus cases on Saturday, the second-highest in the world although new infection rates have fallen sharply in recent weeks. The country reported more than 25,000 in the last 24 hours. It has also reported 9.6 million recoveries and 145,136 deaths.
Earlier, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said that the country has enough capacity to produce Covid-19 vaccines for its needs and also export it to other countries that need its help.
The country expects to roll out vaccines soon and is considering an emergency-use request for three shots, developed by Oxford/AstraZeneca, Pfizer and local company Bharat Biotech.
But some health experts say the fall in cases suggests many Indians may have already developed virus antibodies through natural infection.
“Herd immunity is a huge part of it … which is helping us to break the transmission,” said Pradeep Awate, a senior health official in India’s worst-hit state of Maharashtra, home to Mumbai.
India’s richest state was in dire straits back in September when its daily cases averaged 20,000 and hospitals ran out of beds and oxygen. It is now reporting fewer than 5,000 cases.
“If infections were surging, we would have seen the number of patients in hospitals go up, especially after the festival season. That has not happened,” said Raman Gangakhedkar, who until recently headed epidemiology at the Indian Council Of Medical Research.
A government-appointed panel tasked with making projections based on a mathematical model has estimated that 60% of India’s 1.35 billion people have already been infected with the virus.
“If the model is correct, it is unlikely that a second wave will happen, because once 60% have immunity, nothing can cause another wave,” said Manindra Agrawal, a committee member and professor at the Indian Institute of Technology in the northern city of Kanpur.
“However, the predictions of the model need to be independently confirmed by a sero survey for us to be certain.”
Meanwhile, Russian authorities said that 585 people had died of Covid-19 in the last 24 hours, taking the country’s official death toll to 50,347. Authorities also reported 28,209 new coronavirus cases in the last day, including 6,459 in Moscow, bringing the national tally to 2,819,429.
Meanwhile, Chilean President Sebastian Pinera was slapped with a $3,500 fine on Friday after posing for a selfie on the beach with a bystander without wearing a mask as required during the coronavirus pandemic, health authorities said.
Swiss drugs regulator Swissmedic has authorised the Covid-19 vaccine from Pfizer and partner BioNTech, the agency said. “According to the data assessed by the Swiss Agency for Therapeutic Products, the level of protection afforded seven days after the second injection of the vaccine is over 90 percent. This represents the world’s first authorisation in the ordinary procedure,” Swissmedic said on its website.
Meanwhile, Slovak Prime Minister Igor Matovic has announced that he had tested positive for Covid-19, a week after he attended an EU summit in Brussels. The summit is believed to be where French President Emmanuel Macron caught the virus, leading a host of European leaders and top French officials to go into self-isolation.
