Over 9.43 crore COVID-19 vaccine doses have been administered in India as of 7 a.m. on Friday. About 41% of doses were given to those aged 60 and above. However, wide disparities exist among States when it comes to vaccination coverage for senior citizens. As of Thursday, less than 15% of that age group received a dose in Tamil Nadu, Punjab, Telangana and Assam, while over 50% of the 60-year-olds in Rajasthan, Sikkim and Tripura were administered a shot.
India’s daily case count surpassed the 1.3 lakh mark for the second consecutive day, with 1,31,138 infections reported as of 9 p.m. on Friday. As many as 662 deaths were also recorded on the day.
The figures do not include cases and deaths from Assam, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand. The data is sourced from covid19india.org, an independent aggregator of daily COVID-19 figures.
The country has so far reported a total of 1,31,89,092 cases and 1,68,356 deaths.
Maharashtra reported 58,993 infections (accounting for nearly 45% of the new cases) on Friday, followed by Uttar Pradesh with 9,587 cases and Delhi with 8,521 new infections.
Maharashtra also recorded the maximum casualties (301) on Friday. Punjab followed with 56 new deaths, Karnataka with 46, and Gujarat registered 42 new casualties.
The country recorded 73,986 recoveries on the day, taking the total to 1,19,84,727.
The number of samples tested continued to rise steadily, crossing the 13 lakh mark on Thursday. As many as 13,64,205 tests were conducted on the day, taking the cumulative samples tested to 25,40,41,584.
Maharashtra (15% of new tests), Uttar Pradesh (13%) and Gujarat (8%) led the list in terms of the absolute number of new tests conducted on Thursday. However, in terms of tests conducted relative to the population size, Delhi, Jammu and Kashmir and Uttarakhand were the front-runners.