India becomes fastest country to reach 4 mln COVID-19 vaccination mark

NEW DELHI: In a significant achievement, India has become the fastest country in the world to reach the 4 million COVID-19 vaccination mark in 18 days, said the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) on Wednesday.

"As on February 1, 2021, India was among the top five countries in terms of the number of COVID19 vaccine doses administered to people. India continues to undertake its vaccination drive at a fast pace," the Ministry said.

The ministry said that 14 states and Union Territories (UTs) have not reported any deaths in the last 24 hours. These states include Arunachal Pradesh, Tripura, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim, Manipur, Puducherry, Goa, Odisha and Assam.

The country's active cases have declined further to 1,60,057 in the last 24 hours. The active caseload of the country has fallen below 1.5 per cent (1.49 per cent presently) of the total cases.

"11,039 new confirmed cases were recorded in the last 24 hours in the country, the lowest in seven months and 14,225 new recoveries were registered in the same period. It has led to a net decline of 3,296 cases from the total active caseload," it said.

The total recovered cases are 1,04,62,631 and the national recovery rate (97.08 per cent) continues to be one of the highest globally, the Ministry said.

The gap between active cases and recovered cases is continuously increasing and stands at 1,03,02,574.

At present, 31 States and UTs have less than 5,000 active cases.

Eight States and UTs have weekly positivity rate higher than the national average (1.91 per cent). Kerala has the highest weekly positivity rate of 12 per cent, followed by Chhattisgarh at 7 per cent.

As on February 3, 2021, till 8 am, more than 41 lakh (41,38,918) beneficiaries have received the vaccination under the countrywide COVID19 vaccination exercise.

In the last 24 hours, 1,88,762 healthcare workers were vaccinated across 3,845 sessions. 76,576 sessions have been conducted so far.

The number of beneficiaries being vaccinated every day has shown a progressive increase. "85.62 per cent of the newly recovered cases are recorded in 8 States and UTs. Kerala has contributed the highest number to the newly recovered cases (5,747), followed by Maharashtra (4,011) and Tamil Nadu (521)."

83.01 per cent of the new cases are from 6 States and UTs.

Kerala has reported the highest daily new cases at 5,716, followed by Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu with 1,927and 510 new cases each respectively.

110 case fatalities have been reported in the past 24 hours. Maharashtra reported maximum casualties with 30 new fatalities. It is followed by Kerala with 16 new daily deaths.