India Coronavirus Dispatch: Vaccination slow on purpose, says ICMR official

How to download your Covid vaccination certificate, South African and Brazilian variants found, experts puzzled by sharp drop in cases-news relevant to India's fight against Covid-19

IN NUMBERS: As many as 9 million essential workers vaccinated so far

India reported 11,610 fresh coronavirus infections on Wednesday, taking the cumulative caseload to 10,937,320, according to a report in the Scroll. A hundred deaths were reported, taking the total death toll to 155,913, according to central health ministry data. The total recoveries have surged to 10,644,858. The national recovery rate has climbed to 97.33 per cent. The active caseload fell to 136,549, which makes up 1.25 per cent of the total caseload. About 9 million healthcare and frontline workers have been inoculated since the nationwide inoculation programme kicked off on January 16. Read more here

Current vaccination pace deliberately slow: ICMR task force official

The central government will eventually pick up the pace of the vaccination programme with a goal to inoculate about 7 million people a day, a senior official of the ICMR's national Covid task force told ThePrint. The current pace is deliberately slow to understand the hiccups in the system, said Dr N K Arora, head of the operations research group in the task force. “India’s Covid-19 vaccination drive is a mega event. It’s like a marathon race where you don’t start with the highest speed but you gradually pick up," Arora told ThePrint. Read more here

Cases of South African, Brazilian variant found in India

Four cases of the South African variant of the novel coronavirus and one case of the Brazilian variant have been found in passengers who returned to India from abroad, according to Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) Director-General Dr Balram Bhargava, a report in ThePrint said. The South African variant was found in January 2021, while the Brazil variant was discovered this month. “The Brazil and South African variants are different from the UK variant. In the UK variant, the spike proteins were mutated but in the other two strains the receptor binding domains are mutated…which means they can easily bind into lungs of the human body,” Bhargava said. Read more here

How to download your Covid-19 certificate

India's flagship digital platform to monitor and manage the Covid-19 vaccination programme Co-Win has been integrated into the government's coronavirus contact tracing app Aarogya Setu. The integration will allow users to download their vaccine certificates and other useful information from right from Aarogya Setu. Here's a step-by-step explainer from The Quint on how to download your Covid-19 vaccination certificate. Read more here

Dramatic drop in cases leaves experts puzzled

When Covid-19 arrived on India's shores, medical experts feared that the pandemic would wreak havoc on the country's fragile public health system. However, from a peak of nearly 100,000 daily cases infections began to drop sharply in September to about 11,000 daily cases now, leaving experts puzzled. Experts have suggested many possible theories for the sharp drop including that some areas in the country may have achieved herd immunity or that Indians may have some form of pre-existing protection against coronavirus. Read more here