India on Saturday recorded 2,35,532 new cases of coronavirus, taking the total number of cases to 4,08,58,241 since the pandemic began in January 2020. In the past 24 hours, 613 people died due to the virus, taking the official toll to 4,92,940.

The daily positivity rate dropped further, from 15.88% to 13.39%, while the recovery rate was 93.89%. Over the past day, there have been 3,35,939 recoveries.

There are 20,04,333 active cases in the country currently, and active infections declined by 1,01,278 in the past day. Active cases constitute 4.91% of the country’s total caseload as of now.

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As many as 165,04,87,260 Covid-19 vaccines have been administered in the country since the inoculation drive started in the country on January 16 last year. Of these, 56,72,766 doses were administered on Friday.

Around 17.59 lakh tests were conducted in the past 24 hours.

India updates

  • The Drugs Controller General of India on Friday gave approval to biotechnology company Bharat Biotech to conduct trials of its intranasal Covid-19 booster dose in India.
  • Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya on Friday said that over 60% of children aged 15-18 years have been given their first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine. “Young India showing the way!” he said in a tweet.
  • In Karnataka, another state that has been reporting high Covid cases, state Health Minister Sudhakar K on Friday said that the dominant strain was still the Delta variant. He said that out of 6,000 samples from the state that had been sent for genome sequencing, 73.89% were of the Delta strain or its sub-lineages.

Global updates

  • Globally, the coronavirus has infected more than 36.99 crore people and killed over 56.49 lakh, according to data shared by Johns Hopkins University.
  • The World Health Organization on Friday said that NeoCov virus, a new kind of coronavirus, requires further study, NDTV reported.
  • The NeoCov virus was discovered among bats by a team of Wuhan researchers in South Africa. In a study, yet to be peer-reviewed, the researchers said that the NeoCov virus can penetrate human cells in the same way as the Covid-19 virus.