Jamie Mullick

Despite a recent drop in cases and deaths the world over, the World Health Organization (WHO) stressed on Tuesday that “we’re not out of the woods yet”, even if many people think the battle is nearly over.

The proportion of people fully vaccinated is set to cross the 25% mark as early as Wednesday.

These sounds, even accompanied by urban noise like traffic, can help relieve symptoms of stress, enhance cognitive performance, and even alleviate intense pain, researchers have found.

According to government data, as of Monday night, the total number of doses administered in the country has now crossed 817 million, with 208 million people being fully vaccinated and another 400 having received a single dose of the vaccine

Till 11pm on Friday, 23,141,139 jabs were administered, according to the government data. The previous record for single-day dose administration was set on August 31, with 12.87 million doses administered across the country.

Three states (Himachal Pradesh, Sikkim and Goa) and three Union territories (Ladakh, Lakshadweep and Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu) have announced in the past two weeks that they have administered first doses to their entire populations.

This is particularly evident if we look at the number of new infections appearing across the western world today with the spread of the Delta variant. As of September 7, the variant had spread to 170 countries and territories, and caused a rise in infections in many of them, according to the WHO

In 2021 alone, there were 10,298 excess deaths in the city – a testament to the brutal toll of the second wave. Of these, 6,652 excess deaths were just in two months – May and June, a time when the city’s hospitals were overflowing with patients.

Delhi government officials said they intend to cover the remaining population with vaccines within “two or three months”, and as such are confident of meeting the overall national target of administering both doses to all adults by the end of this year.

A total of 12,869,300 Covid-19 vaccine doses had been administered till 11pm on Tuesday, according to data from the Union health ministry’s Co-WIN dashboard, bettering the previous high of 10,064,376 doses set on Friday. Before that, on August 16, 8.82 million jabs were administered across India

Tuesday’s record single-day jabs means that in August, the country administered a total of 183.5 million doses, translating to a daily average of 5.9 million doses throughout the month

On Wednesday, the state reported 31,445 new infections, making it responsible for more than two-thirds of all new cases reported across India on the day.

The figures from Bihar, based on deaths registered in the state’s Civil Registration System between January 2015 and May 2021, present one of the largest deviations in excess mortality seen in such calculations of any state in the country so far.

The central government attributed the increase in the pace of daily vaccination to the availability of shots, “advance visibility of supply” to states and Union territories which enabled them to plan better, as well as the “streamlining” of the overall supply chain.

The study, which analysed surveillance data of over 440,000 samples that underwent RT-PCR tests for Covid-19 in Tamil Nadu’s Madurai, is one of the first to categorically differentiate the outcomes of symptomatic or asymptomatic infection among Covid-19 cases in India. 

While in absolute numbers, the increase in cases may be marginal, it’s the change in trend that is the alarming part. Each time such a reversal has occurred in India’s outbreak, it has marked a crucial turning point in the cycle

The seven-day average of new infections, which denotes the country’s Covid-19 case curve, dropped to a low of 37,975 every day for the week ending July 22, but has since risen gradually with 40,710 new cases being reported every day for the week ending August 3.

Kerala also has a Covid-19 mortality rate of 0.5%, the best of any major state in the country, and significantly better than the national average of 1.3%.

In fact, a look at the country’s best population-wise administration of vaccine doses shows how far ahead the state is in terms of administering doses. Among India’s 25 most populous regions, Kerala is on the third spot with 55 doses administered per 100 residents

The pace of daily vaccinations, meanwhile, has been slowing again. On average, 3.8 million shots have been administered every day in the past seven days, a drop of over 40% from the peak levels witnessed in the country.

The slowdown comes at a time when the states and the Centre are locked in a war of words over supply of doses.

While the pandemic has been in the country for a year and four months, data shows that more than 60% of all officially reported deaths have come in just the past four months (from March this year), or during India’s second wave of infections.

A person living in urban India is at least 1.8 times more likely to receive a shot of the Covid-19 vaccine than their counterpart living in the rural hinterland

Nearly one out of every five deaths that added to the national death toll in the past 30 days was a fatality that occurred days ago and had gone unreported, according to data analysed by HT

With a little over 100,000 new infections across India on Sunday, daily cases in the country dropped to the lowest level seen in over two months, underlining the country’s turnaround after the brutal second wave of the viral outbreak

The death toll from the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) in India surpassed the 300,000 mark on Sunday, a grim milestone that comes at what appears to be the peak of the devastating second wave of the pandemic in the country. A look at how the virus took such a toll on the country.