India on Monday reported 35,499 new cases of coronavirus in the last 24 hours taking the tally of infections to 3,19,69,954 since the pandemic broke out in January last year. The number of cases were 9.14% fewer than Sunday’s count of 39,070 infections.
The toll rose to 4,28,309 with 447 deaths in the last 24 hours. The number of active cases declined by 4,634 to 4,02,188, while as many as 3,11,39,457 people have recovered from the disease so far.
Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has said that the state government will hold a mass inoculation drive from Monday till August 31, the Hindustan Times reported. Final year degree students, those in postgraduate courses and teachers at lower and upper primary levels will be the focus of the vaccination drive. Kerala has been reporting the highest number of daily cases among all states.
The Delhi government on Monday put in place a colour-coded action plan on Covid-related restrictions in the city in the coming days, NDTV reported. The restrictions range from a yellow alert, or Level 1, to a red alert, or Level 4, based on indicators like positivity rate, number of cases in a week and availability of oxygen beds in hospitals.
The Delhi Disaster Management Authority has allowed schools in the city to reopen partially for students of Classes 10 and 12 from Monday, ANI reported. However, no regular classes will be held and students will be allowed to go to schools only for counseling, guidance and practical activities related to board exams.
In Maharashtra, fully vaccinated people will be allowed to board local trains in Mumbai from August 15, two weeks after the second dose of their jabs, Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray said on Sunday. The state government has also allowed relaxations in Covid-19 norms in restaurants, hotels and malls in Pune and Pimpri Chinchwad districts.
Global updates
Francis Collins, the director of the United States’ National Institutes of Health, on Sunday said that the country was failing in its battle to keep the coronavirus in check, AFP reported. The average daily cases in the United States has gone past the one lakh-mark for the first time since February 11 due to spread of the Delta variant of the infection.
Meanwhile, in China, authorities in the city of Wuhan on Sunday said they had completed Covid-19 testing of more than 1.1 crore people after a resurgence of cases more than a year after the coronavirus first emerged there, according to AFP. By Saturday, the city had recorded 37 locally transmitted Covid-19 cases. Wuhan had not reported any cases for over a year until August 2, when seven people tested positive for the virus.
Globally, Covid-19 has infected more than 20.26 crore people and caused 42.93 lakh deaths since the pandemic broke out in December 2019, according to Johns Hopkins University.
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