Coronavirus LIVE Updates: US scientists are developing a strain of the coronavirus that could be used to deliberately infect volunteers in so-called "challenge studies," a government agency said Friday.
The work is preliminary and the government is continuing to prioritize randomized clinical trials of vaccine candidates, the National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) said. Several of these have entered their final stages, including the vaccines developed by Moderna, Pfizer and AstraZeneca. But NIAID has nonetheless "begun efforts to manufacture a strain that could be used to develop a human challenge model, if needed," it said in a statement. In normal clinical trials, volunteers receive either a medicine or a placebo and their health is then followed over the course of months of years.
Here are the LIVE Updates on Coronavirus:
◑ Cases rise in Assam: Assam's COVID-19 tally rose to 74,501 with 2,706 people testing positive on Friday, while six more persons succumbed to the disease taking the death toll to 175, Health Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said. The state at present has 22,630 active novel coronavirus patients, who are under treatment in various hospitals and Covid Care Centres (CCC), Sarma tweeted.
◑ Fee Cuts in Assam Private Schools: The Assam government on Friday has asked all the private schools to slash 25 per cent fee from pre-school to Class XII standard from May till the schools open, Education and Health Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said.
◑ Cases Rise in Himachal Pradesh: The COVID-19 infection tally reached 3,875 in Himachal Pradesh on Friday with 58 more persons testing positive for the disease. There are 1,270 active cases in the state, while a total of 2,551 patients have recovered from the disease, Additional Chief Secretary (Health) R D Dhiman said. Eighteen patients have died due to COVID-19 and 34 migrated out of the state.
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◑ California Passes 60,000 Cases: California became the first US state to surpass 600,000 cases of COVID-19 on Friday and the Midwest saw several record one-day rises as some states struggled to contain the pandemic even as a few welcomed students back to school campuses. California went over 603,000 novel coronavirus cases on Friday, according to a Reuters tally, although Governor Gavin Newsom said he was encouraged to see that hospitalizations have declined 20% over the past two weeks and admissions to ICU wards were down 14% in the same period.
◑ New Zealand Faces Fresh Bout of Infection: Meanwhile, New Zealand on Saturday reported seven cases of the new coronavirus for the last 24 hours as a lockdown in the country's biggest city, Auckland, was extended on Friday in response to the country's first coronavirus outbreak in months. Six of the seven new cases have been linked to the cluster responsible for all the previous community cases, Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield told a media briefing in Wellington.
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