|  | - India’s health ministry has confirmed 604,641 Covid-19 cases (226,947 active cases) and 17,834 fatalities. 19,148 fresh cases were recorded on Wednesday. The Times of India, based on state figures, 17,837 fatalities and 19,684 new cases.
- Fatalities across the world are 516,255 (over 10.69 million infections).
The numbers are as of Thursday, 12:30 pm IST. Check out the latest data here | |
| | TODAY'S TAKE | | How bad was June worldwide? |  | - The global coronavirus pandemic is accelerating, the World Health Organization said Wednesday, with the number of daily cases surging beyond 160,000 every day in the past week, a record. WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus also told a virtual briefing that well over half of all cases recorded since the novel coronavirus first emerged in China late last year were registered in June.
- "For the past week, the number of the new cases has exceeded 160,000 on every single day," he said, adding that "60% of all cases so far have been reported just in the past month”. Data provided by the UN health agency showed that the highest number of new daily Covid-19 cases ever recorded came on June 28, when more than 189,500 new cases were registered worldwide.
- Prior to June 25, daily cases only surpassed 160,000 twice before, both in the preceding week, while daily cases did not pass the 100,000 mark until May 18, the data showed.With over 512,000 deaths and more than 10.5 million known infections worldwide, the pandemic is "not even close to being over", the WHO warned earlier this week.
- Tedros reiterated that taking a "comprehensive approach" was the best way to rein in the virus. "Find, isolate, test and care for every case, trace and quarantine every contact, equip and train health workers and educate and empower communities to protect themselves and others," he said. "Not testing alone. Not physical distancing alone. Not contact tracing alone. Not masks alone. Do it all." Countries that have implemented a wide range of measures, including contact tracing, isolation, physical distancing and mask wearing "have suppressed transmission and saved lives", he added.
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| | STAY SAFE | | Have the discharged patients really recovered? |  | - According to India’s health ministry, India’s recovery rate of Covid-19 cases has risen to over 59.5% — with close to 3.6 lakh of the over 6 lakh cases having recovered. However, the recoveries also include those who may not have been fully recovered but have been discharged and that may be the reason for the improving recovery rate.
- Take for example Uttar Pradesh, which, in the last 21 days has seen its recovery rate shoot up by almost 9 percentage points, from 60.32% on June 11 to 69.1% on Thursday, with 16,629 people of the total 24,056 people infected with Covid-19 so far having recovered, or discharged. Part of the reason is attributed to the change in discharge policy last month, wherein asymptomatic patients are being discharged after 10 days without the second mandatory second test coming negative. They are then required to be in home quarantine for a period of seven days.
- The changed norms are in fact based on the revised guidelines of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), which allowed discharge of patients showing mild or very mild symptoms “after 10 days of symptom onset and no fever for 3 days” with “no need for testing prior to discharge”. The guidelines said that the “patient will be advised to isolate himself at home and self-monitor their health for further 7 days”. That however, could result in patients who are still not fully recovered inter-mingling with healthy people, raising the possibility of the spread of Covid-19 in hitherto healthy people, which even medical experts have cautioned about.
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| | | THE GOOD NEWS | | Another Covid-19 vaccine shows promising results |  | - An experimental vaccine jointly developed by pharma company Pfizer and biotech firm BioNTech has demonstrated some good results by inducing an immune response in a human trial conducted on healthy patients. However, the trials also pointed out the need for a controlled dose as higher doses resulted in patients developing fever and other side-effects, none of which are deemed serious.
- The trials, results of which were published on Wednesday, were conducted on 45 patients in the 18-59 age group and involved injecting them with doses of 10 μg, 30 μg and 100 μg. They showed that after the second dose of 10 μg and 30 μg, the number of antibodies produced were 1.8 and 2.8 times respectively the amount of antibodies found in convalescent serum, that is, the blood plasma of recovered Covid-19 patients.
- The side effects included continued pain at the injection site, where the vaccine was administered to the healthy patients, as also “mild to moderate fatigue and headache”, which was observed 7 days after vaccination. Other symptoms included chills, muscle pain and joint pain, as also fever, which subsided within a day, with no hospitalisation required.
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| Written by: Rakesh Rai, Judhajit Basu, Sumil Sudhakaran, Tejeesh N.S. Behl
Research: Rajesh Sharma | |
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