Here are the top updates from Friday:

  1. The United Kingdom’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation has said that it does not recommend Covid-19 vaccines for children aged between 12 and 15 as there was little evidence to support the need for these shots, The Guardian reported. However, it has said that children with health conditions could receive two doses of Pfizer vaccine as they are susceptible to contracting the coronavirus infection. However, the chief medical officers of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will take a final decision next week.
  2. India recorded 45,352 new coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours, pushing the infection tally in the country to 3,29,03,289 since the pandemic broke out in January last year. The toll rose to 4,39,895 after 366 deaths were reported in a span of 24 hours. The active caseload increased for the third consecutive day to 3,99,778, and comprises 1.22% of the total number of infections in the country. As many as 3,20,63,616 people have recovered from the disease so far.
  3. Maharashtra deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar said that the government should not be put in a position to shut down everything if a third wave hits, the Hindustan Times reported. He urged people in the state to follow all Covid-19 protocols to prevent the virus from spreading. On Friday, Maharashtra saw 4,342 new cases of the coronavirus, taking the overall tally since January 2020 to 62,81,985.
  4. The Drugs Controller General of India permitted Biological E permission to start mid-stage studies of its Covid-19 vaccine among children and adolescents. The firm will study the feasibility of its Corbevax shot among the approved demographic.
  5. The Supreme Court criticised the Centre for the delay in framing guidelines to issue death certificates to the families of those who died due to Covid-19. The top court had on June 30 directed the Centre to frame guidelines, so that the dependents of those who died due to the coronavirus could avail of the benefits of welfare schemes.
  6. The Supreme Court stayed the Kerala government’s decision to conduct offline exams for Class 11 students from Monday amid the coronavirus pandemic. The court said that the situation in Kerala is worrying as it accounts for most daily cases in India. On Friday, Kerala reported 29,322 new Covid-19 cases, taking the state’s cumulative tally since January 2020 to 41,51,455. With 131 deaths, the toll rose to 21,280.
  7. The Bombay High Court on Friday asked the Centre and the state government to reply to a petition seeking the inclusion of books under “essential services”, The Indian Express reported. The plea, filed in April by Marathi Prakashak Parishad, had said that coronavirus restrictions had harmed the book publishing industry.
  8. China has supplied 1 billion doses of Covid vaccines to the world, Reuters reported. In August, President Xi Jinping had said that China would provide a total of 2 billion doses by the end of this year.
  9. The European Union will return a majority of the 20 million doses of Johnson and Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine from a plant in South African, The Wall Street Journal reported. Several health activists had criticised the EU for taking shots from a continent that had one of the lowest immunisation rates across the world.
  10. Covid-19 has infected more than 21.92 crore people and led to over 45.46 lakh deaths since the beginning of the pandemic in December 2019, according to Johns Hopkins University.