India Coronavirus Dispatch: Daily death toll crosses 4,500-mark

Delhi's Covid war room is ready but devoid of real-time updates, Bangladesh reaches out for vaccines, and more-news relevant to India's fight against Covid-19

Over 4,500 fresh fatalities reported in fresh daily high

India reported 267,334 fresh coronavirus infections on Wednesday, taking the cumulative caseload to 25.4 million, according to central health ministry data. The country saw a record 4,529 deaths due to the pandemic, taking the death toll to 283,248. The active caseload is at 3.2 million, while the total recoveries have surged to 21.9 million. As many as 185 million shots have been administered since the nationwide inoculation programme kicked off on January 16. Of these, 1.3 million were given on Tuesday. Read more


IIT-Gandhinagar sets up Covid care centre on campus, shares how-to guide

To encourage other educational institutions, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Gandhinagar in Gujarat has released a white paper to share its experience and insights from developing and managing an on-campus Covid care centre, a report in ThePrint said. The institute successfully managed a peak load of 95 patients at the Covid centre—an isolation facility with medical care—in April. It brought the load down to just one patient by May 16. As many as 94 per cent of those who availed the facility didn’t need hospitalisation, according to the institute, the report said. Read more


Delhi’s Covid war room is ready, but devoid of real-time updates

The Delhi government’s newly-inaugurated Covid war room at the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) building in Palika Kendra isn’t yet much in action like, say, the Covid war room in Mumbai, a report in ThePrint said. The war room was set up in Delhi after the Kejriwal government drew flak for having failed to have a one-stop centre to provide data in the national capital. However, as of Tuesday, the war room was devoid of real-time updates. The initiative works more as a data feeder on a single platform as opposed to being a guiding force to aid the government, and patient coordination on the ground, the report said. Read more


What happens if the gap between two vaccine doses exceeds recommended interval?

Doctors recommend that a vaccine recipient follow the ideal gap beween shots recommended by the vaccine maker, an explainer in The Indian Express said. However, there are no side effects even if the recommended interval is exceeded. “If the interval exceeds by more than one to two weeks after the recommended period, then the antibody response might not be as strong as expected,” says Dr K S Satish, senior consultant, pulmonology & chest medicine, Fortis Hospitals. Also, there is no need to start the inoculation cycle again as the first dose of the vaccine will have an impact. Read more

Bangladesh reaches out to India for vaccine

Bangladesh has reached out to India and the US for supplying surplus AstraZeneca vaccines to Dhaka as the country is facing a shortage, a report in The Indian Express said citing sources. Bangladesh Foreign Minister A K Abdul Momen called up India's External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Tuesday and asked for the vaccines. The Serum Institute of India (SII) was supposed to send 5 million doses a month to Bangladesh over a six-month period starting January. The vaccine maker delivered the first 5 million doses as per the deal, but shipped only 2 million in February. No other shipment has been made since, the report said. Read more