Covid-19 India Updates: Vaccinations Cross 50-Crore Mark; J&J's Single Dose Shot Gets Emergency Use Nod

India has granted emergency use approval to Johnson and Johnson’s single-dose Covid-19 vaccine, health minister Mansukh Mandaviya tweeted.

With this, India now has five vaccines, with the other four namely Serum Institute of India's Covishield, Bharat Biotech's Covaxin, Russia's Sputnik V manufactured in collaboration with Dr Reddy's and Biological E's Corbevax.

Johnson & Johnson India applied for the approval on Aug. 5, reported PTI.

India expands its vaccine basket!

Johnson and Johnson’s single-dose COVID-19 vaccine is given approval for Emergency Use in India.

Now India has 5 EUA vaccines.

This will further boost our nation's collective fight against #COVID19

— Mansukh Mandaviya (@mansukhmandviya) August 7, 2021

The delta outbreak worsened across Australia’s biggest cities, with cases in Sydney and Melbourne hitting highs for the current outbreak. Thailand saw record daily coronavirus infections and deaths as the illness spread beyond the capital.

People who have previously survived Covid-19 are more than twice as likely to catch the disease again if they’re not vaccinated, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control said Friday. Russia’s death toll from Covid-19 in June climbed to 27,118, the highest since the virus raged in January, while Poland registered 176 new cases on Thursday, the most since mid-June.

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Daily Covid-19 infection rate in India fell below the 40,000-mark, providing some respite at a time when the country is bracing for an imminent third wave.

In the world's second-most populous nation, around 38,000 people tested positive for the Covid-19 in the last 24 hours, according to the Health Ministry's Aug. 7 update. This breaks the trend of daily cases remaining above the 42,000-mark for two consecutive days.

India's active case load also marginally fell to 4.12 lakh, as daily recoveries overtook new cases in the last day.

Key Coronavirus Data

• Total confirmed cases: 3,18,95,385

• Total number of active cases: 4,12,153

• Total patients cured/discharged/migrated: 3,10,55,861

• Total deaths: 4,27,371

• Number of fresh cases in last 24 hours: 38,628

• Number of recoveries in a day: 40,017

• Deaths recorded in a day: 617

• Total vaccine doses administered: 50,10,09,609

• Doses administered in the last 24 hours: 49,55,138

As many as 617 people passed away due to the deadly virus in the same period, taking India's total death toll to 4.27 lakh, the third worst in the world.

India also crossed the 50-crore vaccine milestone, with nearly 50 lakh doses being administered in the last 24 hours.