Social stigma and low testing are the key reasons for the high mortality rate among COVID-19 patients in West Bengal, where the disease, like elsewhere in the country, is still an urban phenomenon, experts say. The state's Trinamool Congress government has been drawing consistent criticism from the Centre and opposition parties over the way it has tackled the pandemic, and has been accused of under-reporting data about the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths.
It took 64 days for COVID-19 cases in India to touch the (May 19) one lakh-mark from 100 cases, and another fortnight to cross two lakh cases on June 3. It took 10 days for the tally to touch the three lakh-mark and another eight days for the cases to climb to four lakh.
'Most vaccines do target the Spike protein, in which there are changes in the variants but vaccines stimulate our immune system to produce a wide range of protective antibodies'
The national average of COVID-19 tests per day per million population is 865, the ministry said, asserting that the country has demonstrated an exponential increase in the COVID-19 testing infrastructure since January 2020.
Of the 418 deaths reported in the last 24 hours, 181 are from Maharashtra.
The 33-year-old man had recently returned from Italy and is being treated at Capital Hospital in Bhubaneswar, he said.
'If deaths had been properly reported, it would have helped contain the pandemic.'
This is the third consecutive day when COVID-19 cases increased by more than 45,000.
'Mahabharata of coronavirus pandemic is on, but the Modi government is missing'
In a letter to the prime minister, the country's largest body of doctors said only an 'inclusive national solatium' for all doctors who have lost their lives fighting the pandemic would render justice to the sacrifice of their families.
The novel coronavirus has mutated before, and both companies say they've found that their vaccines worked against other variations of the virus.
Dr Tedros said the team has concluded that leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology as alleged by former US president Donald Trump is the "least likely hypothesis" but it requires further probe.
India registered over 10,000 cases for the eighth day in a row.
With 13,083 fresh cases, India's COVID-19 tally has gone up to 1,07,33,131, while 1,04,09,160 patients have recuperated so far, pushing the national recovery rate to 96.98 per cent, the health ministry said.
India's COVID-19 recoveries have sprinted past 27 lakh, taking the recovery rate to 76.61 per cent, while the case fatality rate has further dropped to 1.79 per cent, the health ministry said on Sunday.
The crime branch has so far arrested 12 persons, including Republic TV's distribution head and owners of two other channels, in connection with the case.
India has come a long way from conducting the first COVID-19 test in January in a laboratory in Pune to crossing the milestone of conducting four crore such tests.
India's unemployed, the report said, were mostly those with higher education degrees and the young.
