22,15,074 Vaccine price to be known in 2 months: SII
Former President Pranab Mukherjee was among those testing positive for coronavirus Monday as India’s overall infections reached 22,15,074, with
62,064 fresh cases. India also reported 1,007 deaths in a day, taking its fatality count to 44,386, the health ministry said.
According to
Covid19India.org figures, the country’s total cases were about 22.5 lakhs, with nearly 45,000 deaths.
In a tweet, Pranab Mukherjee, India’s
President from 2012 to
2017, said: “On a visit to hospital for a separate procedure, I tested positive for
Covid-19. I request people who came into contact with me in the last week to please self-isolate and get tested.”
He has been admitted to the Army’s R&R Hospital in Delhi.
This comes on a day World Health Organisation chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus predicted the number of people infected by the coronavirus will hit 20 million this week, including around 750,000 deaths.
In a briefing on Monday,
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus acknowledged that behind these statistics there is a great deal of pain and suffering but said there were still green shoots of hope no matter what stage in an outbreak a country or region might be.
India’s Covid recoveries crossed 1.5 million on Monday after 15,35,743 patients were recorded to be fully cured. With the highest ever single day recoveries of 54,859 in the last 24 hours, the Recovery Rate amongst the patients has scaled another high of almost 70 per cent, the health ministry officials said. “The record high recoveries have ensured that the actual caseload of the country viz. the active cases has reduced and currently comprises only 28.66 per cent of the total positive cases. India has posted more than 9 lakh recoveries than the active cases (6,34,945),” officials added.
They further said that early detection through aggressive testing and efficient clinical management of hospitalised cases have shown results with continuously regressing Case Fatality Rate which is 2 per cent now and steadily declining.
Meanwhile, Serum Institute of India (SII), which along with Oxford University and AstraZeneca is conducting phase 2 and 3 of human trials of trials of the vaccine candidate, said the vaccine may be available by the year end and the final price of the vaccine will be announced in two months.
Meanwhile, Kerala on Monday recorded 1,184 cases while 784 recovered from the infection.
Of the new cases, 956 contracted the infection through contact, source of infection among 114 persons is yet to be known,
106 came from abroad, 73 from other states and 41 health workers.
Seven deaths were reported in the state on Monday.
The maximum number of cases were reported from Malappuram district
255, Thiruvananthapuram
200, Palakkad 147, Kasargod 146 and Ernakulam 101 respectively. So far 22,616 persons have recovered from the infection while 12,740 patients are still under treatment in various hospitals across the state, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan told media persons on Monday.