India Coronavirus Dispatch: Daily infections retreat to 61-day low

Centre 'willing' to rethink vaccine procurement policy, six UP districts among those with the lowest vaccination coverage, and more-news relevant to India's fight against the pandemic

Over 100,000 fresh cases reported

India reported 100,636 fresh coronavirus infections on Monday, taking the cumulative caseload to 28.9 million, according to central health ministry data. The daily rise was the lowest in 61 days. The country saw 2,427 deaths due to the pandemic, taking the death toll to 349,186. The active caseload is at 1.4 million, while the total recoveries have surged to 27.1 million. As many as 232 million shots have been administered since the nationwide inoculation programme kicked off on January 16. Of these, nearly 1.4 million were given on Sunday. Read more

More antibodies produced by Covishield than Covaxin: Study

Two doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, known as Covishield in India, produced more antibodies than Bharat Biotech's Covaxin, but there were fewer instances of 'breakthrough infections' after the latter, a report in The Hindu said that cited a study of healthcare workers in India. As many as 515 healthcare workers from 13 States and covering 22 cities were evaluated from January to May for the study. The study is being peer-reviewed and has been submitted to a journal but appears as a preprint in MedrXiv, an online repository. It is among a few studies on the real-world effectiveness of vaccination in India, the report said. Read more

Six UP districts among states with the lowest vaccination coverage

Six districts from Uttar Pradesh are part of the 10 districts with the lowest vaccination coverage in India, an analysis piece on the Scroll said that cited official data from the Centre's Co-Win platform. The district with the worst vaccine coverage is South Salmara-Mankachar in Assam, which has administered only 3.2 doses for every 100 people. South Salmara-Mankachar is not the only Assam district to feature in the bottom ten. There is also Baksa, one of the four districts that make up the Bodoland Territorial Region. The six Uttar Pradesh districts at the bottom of the pile are Sambhal, Hardoi, Kannauj, Lakhimpur Kheri, Etah and Sant Kabir Nagar.

Two north Tamil Nadu districts, Ranipet and Kallakurichi, complete the bottom ten, the report said. Read more

Centre ‘willing’ to rethink vaccine procurement policy

As more and more states request the Centre to take over vaccine procurement after having seen little success in purchasing vaccines through global tenders, the central government is considering going back to centralised procurement, a report in The Indian Express said citing a top government source. “If all states want the Union government to centrally procure, we will discuss it. We are willing to consider such a request,” the source told the newspaper. Read more

Maharashtra: Price caps on Covid care not rationalised, say IMA doctors

Several hospital managements have expressed reservations about the Maharashtra government's move to carry on with the upper limit in prices for Covid-19 treatment, a report in The Indian Express said. The pricing was fixed without a thorough study of costs borne by private hospitals and ignored the rise in expenditure on oxygen, medicines, biomedical waste management among others, some hospitals said. Read more