India’s coronavirus count rose to 69,79,423 on Saturday as the country reported 73,272 new cases in the last 24 hours. The toll rose by 926 to 1,07,416. There are 8,83,185 active cases in the country. The recovery rate stood at 85.52%.
Of the total cases in India, Maharashtra alone accounts for 15,06,018. The toll from the disease in the state is 39,732.
The World Health Organization registered a worldwide record of 3,50,000 new daily coronavirus cases. WHO’s emergencies chief Michael Ryan said there were no new answers for the surge. Globally, the coronavirus count crossed 3.67 crore and the toll rose to 10,67,060, according to Johns Hopkins University. The number of recoveries crossed 2.55 crore.
China claimed that Covid-19 broke out in various parts of the world last year, but it was the only country to have reported and taken action against it. Beijing also denied United States’ allegations that the virus first emerged from a bio-lab in Wuhan, or from the country’s wet markets. “We all know that the epidemic broke out in various places in the world at the end of last year, while China was the first to report the outbreak, identified the pathogen and shared the genome sequence with the world,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said.
Meanwhile, India and Israel are jointly developing a rapid Covid-19 testing technology that will give results in less than a minute. “I think it is a matter of days,” said Israeli envoy to India Ron Malka. “What I hear from those involved in the process, it should not take more than 2-3 weeks to finalise that one reliable and accurate technology or a combination of more than one from amongst the four different technologies being analysed.”
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