India Coronavirus Dispatch: Average daily vaccinations drop in July

WHO warns against mixing and matching vaccines, Madhya Pradesh adds 1,478 Covid 'backlog' deaths, and more-news relevant to India's fight against the pandemic

Nearly 33,000 fresh cases reported

India reported 32,906 fresh coronavirus infections on Tuesday, taking the cumulative caseload to 30.9 million, according to central health ministry data. The country saw more 2020 deaths due to the pandemic, taking the death toll to 410,784. The active caseload is at 432,778, while the total recoveries have surged to 30 million. As many as 381 million vaccine shots have been administered since the nationwide inoculation programme kicked off on January 16. Of these, 4 million were given on Monday. Read more

Average daily vaccinations drop in July

Average daily vaccinations are down by around 600,000 shots a day compared to June's numbers, a report in ThePrint said. As many as 3,988,979 vaccine doses were administered each day on average in June. This dropped to 3,388,751 in the first eleven days of July. The total vaccine doses available to states, meanwhile, remained the same — 120 million — for both June and July. Read more

WHO warns against mixing and matching Covid vaccines

World Health Organization Chief Scientist Soumya Swaminathan advised people against mixing and matching Covid vaccines from different manufacturers, a report in Reuters said. Swaminathan called it a "dangerous trend" as the data available about the health impact is limited. "It's a little bit of a dangerous trend here. We are in a data-free, evidence-free zone as far as mix and match," Soumya Swaminathan told an online briefing. "It will be a chaotic situation in countries if citizens start deciding when and who will be taking a second, a third and a fourth dose." Read more

Madhya Pradesh adds 1,478 Covid ‘backlog’ deaths

Madhya Pradesh added 1,478 ‘backlog death’ from the second wave of the pandemic till June 30 to its existing record, a report in The Indian Express said. This took the state's Covid death toll to 10,506 from 9,027 until Sunday. This came on the heels of the government issuing a letter to all district authorities asking them to report any deaths till June 30 which were not added so far on the government’s ‘Sarthak’ portal. Read more

Flu shots could reduce risk of stroke, blood clots in Covid patients: Study

A new study has found that the flu vaccine may protect against severe forms of Covid and even cut down the risk of stroke, sepsis and blood clots in patients, a report in ThePrint said. The researchers, from the University of Miami, presented an analysis of patient data from around the world, during the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases (ECCMID), held virtually between 9-12 July this year. The team screened anonymised electronic health records of more than 70 million patients from countries including the US, UK, Germany, Italy, Israel and Singapore, to identify two groups of 37,377 patients. This is the largest study of its kind, the report said. Read more