India’s Covid cases hit 2M; death strikes 41,585

NEW DELHI: India hit another grim milestone in the annals of the coronavirus pandemic on Friday, crossing 2 million cases of infection and more than 41,000 deaths.

India’s health ministry also Brazil, 3.4 percent, Johns Hopkins reported recoveries as a share of University figures showed. total cases are also growing. India The health ministry said on has the third-highest caseload in Friday, 62,538 cases were reported the world after the United States in the past 24 hours, raising the nation’s (US) and Brazil. total to 2,027,074. Also, 886

It has the fifth-most number of people died for a total of 41,585. deaths, and its fatality rate of about The caseload in the world’s 2 percent is far lower than the second- most populous country other hardest-hit countries. The has quickly expanded since rate in the US is 3.3 percent and in the government began lifting a months-long lockdown, hoping to jump-start a moribund economy. The Indian government is projecting negative economic growth in 2020.

As life cautiously returned to the streets of the capital of New Delhi and financial hub Mumbai, both which appear to have passed their peaks, state and local governments elsewhere in India were reimposing lockdowns after sharp spikes in growth.

India had launched two of the world’s dozen-and-a-half prospective vaccines into human trials with vaccine- maker Zydus Cadila announcing it had completed phase one trials of its DNA-based drug on Thursday.

The country will be vital to global vaccination efforts regardless of whether its own attempts work. The world’s largest vaccinemaker, the Serum Institute in the central city of Pune, has ramped up capacity to manufacture as many as a billion doses of a vaccine in development by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford, which is in phase two trials in India and England and phase three trials in Brazil and South Africa.

Researchers are hoping to launch the Oxford vaccine for emergency use by October.