On Wednesday, India has registered 38,353 fresh cases of Covid-19 infection and 497 deaths from the disease in 24 hours, stated the Health Ministry. The country's active cases tally has reached to 3,86,351: the lowest in 140 days, said the ministry. As per the data released by Health Ministry, more than 53.24 crore vaccine doses have been provided to states/UTs so far, and 72,40,250 more are in the pipeline.
Many states/UTs have announced the reopening of schools for offline classes. In Delhi schools are reopened for classes X to XII from Monday. Meanwhile, the Maharashtra government has also announced the reopening of physical classes in schools in both rural and urban areas from August 17. The government of Uttar Pradesh has announced to reopen schools for intermediate students from August 16.
ICMR said, "as many as 48,50,56,507 samples tested for coronavirus till August 10, including 17,77,962 tests yesterday." However, as per sources, a study on mixing Covishield and Covaxin, the two main vaccines used in India's COVID-19 vaccination programme, has been given a go-ahead by the Drugs Controller General Of India (DCGI).
Global updates
The world has recorded 204,722,127 confirmed cases of Covid-19 infection and 4,325,690 deaths across nearly 200 countries recorded since China reported its first cases in December 2019. The US still remains the worst-hit country with 36,891,686 cases, followed by India, Brazil, Russia and France.
"The global eradication of COVID-19 is more feasible than it is for polio, but considerably less so than it was for smallpox", according to an analysis published by the journal BMJ Global Health on Tuesday.