COVID-19 Cases in India: The government said vaccinations won't be opened up to a wider group soon.
India recorded over 1.15 lakh new Covid cases in the last 24 hours for first time since the beginning of the pandemic, setting an unprecedented, grim record during the second wave. The government said the next four weeks are "very, very critical".
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The 1,15,736 new infections have taken the country's total cases to over 1.28 crore. 630 deaths in the last 24 hours have pushed the total coronavirus death count in India to 1,66,177. India is the world's third worst-hit country after the United States and Brazil.
The government on Tuesday said that vaccinations will not be opened up to a wider group anytime soon. "Why did we prioritise some groups over others? Because in this phase of vaccination (till around July), vaccines will be in limited supply," Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan told news agency ANI on Tuesday evening.
Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh are the five states with the highest rise in daily infections.
Maharashtra, the worst-hit state, reported over 55,000 COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours. In Mumbai, a centralised system has been set by the civic body for allotment of beds so that there is no chaos and crowding at hospitals.
Maharashtra is followed by the southern states of Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu in terms of the total caseload.
Chhattisgarh, among the states that saw the highest daily rise in the number of cases, logged in 9,921 new cases. Six per cent of India's Covid cases and 3 per cent of Covid deaths in the country are from Chhattisgarh, whose population is lesser that of the bigger states, Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan said on Tuesday. The centre said the number of RT-PCR tests needs to be increased in the state.
Delhi recorded 5,100 coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours, which is its biggest single-day Covid figure this year. The sharp rise in cases comes as over a lakh tests were conducted in the national capital in a day for the first time. The government on Tuesday imposed a 10 pm to 5 am night curfew till April 30.
With 59,856 patients having recovered in the last 24 hours, the total number of recoveries went up to 1,17,92,135.
Adar Poonawalla of Serum Institute of India (SII), which manufactures Covishield, one of the two Covid vaccines being administered in India, said its current production capacity to make the vaccine is "very stressed, to put it frankly". He told NDTV that SII needed ₹ 3,000 crore - a shortfall linked to the deal with the government to sell a doses at a heavy discount - in order to ramp up capacity needed to scale up production by June.
"It seems that people have given ''tilanjali (abandon)'' to measures and steps that can protect them from Covid, such as mask wearing, avoiding gatherings and maintaining physical distance, which I have called social vaccine and are as important as the vaccines that we now have," Union Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan was quoted as saying in a statement. He pointed out that a big reason for the surge in Covid cases on "lax behaviour towards following Covid norms".
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