New Delhi, Aug 3 (UNI) India's novel coronavirus cases crossed the 18 lakh-mark on Monday, marking the fifth consecutive day when more than 50,000 fresh cases were reported in the country.
The cases now stand at 18,03,695 as 52,972 fresh cases were added to the tally during the past 24 hrs.
The tally includes 5,79,357 active cases, 11,86,203 cured/discharged/migrated and 38,135 deaths. During the past 24 hours, 771 people succumbed to the lethal virus. The recovery rate across the nation stands at 65.77 per cent, the Union Health Ministry said in its regular morning update.
Till Friday, India conducted a total of 2,02,02,858 COVID tests.
Testing
In a landmark achievement, India has tested 2,02,02,858 Covid-19 samples so far.
With 3,81,027 samples tested in the last 24 hours, the number of Test Per Million (TPM) has increased to 14,640. Currently, the testing per million for India is 14,640. While the country's TPM has demonstrated a steady upward trend indicating the growing testing network, 24 states and UTs have reported higher testing per million than the national average, an official release here said.
WHO Health Emergencies Programme Executive Director Dr Michael Ryan praised India for the high-number of testing that the country was conducting from the past few days.
"India's done well on sampling, done 20 million tests already. It does on an average a half a million tests per day. There has been a move in last number of days to really expand testing and to allow greater freedom for medical practitioners to request testing. So the approach to increasing that, the creation of COVID diagnostic training centre as well, is helping to expand the capacity of testing. So clearly India is determined to expand its testing regime further and further afield", he said.
Vaccine Approval
The Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) has given approval to Serum Institute of India, Pune to conduct Phase II and III clinical trials of Oxford University-Astra Zeneca Covid-19 vaccine (COVISHIELD) in the country. This will hasten the development of the Covid-19 vaccine, the Health Ministry said.
Globally, six vaccines are already in Phase 3 of human trials or are about to enter. The human trial phases consist of Phase 1 for safety, Phase 2 for efficacy and dosing, and Phase 3 for efficacy in a huge group of tens of thousands of people.
The World Health Organization today warned that there may never be a “silver bullet” for COVID-19 even though a number of vaccines are in the advance phase. The road to normalcy is long.
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