India on Tuesday registered 28,204 cases of the novel coronavirus in the past 24 hours, taking the tally of infections to 3,19,98,158 since the pandemic broke out in January last year. This was the lowest rise in daily cases in 147 days, or five months, the Centre announced.

The toll on Tuesday rose to 4,28,682 with the country reporting 373 deaths in the past 24 hours. The number of active cases currently stands at 3,88,508, while as many as 3,11,80,968 people have recovered from the disease so far.

The total number of vaccine doses administered in the country has reached 51,45,00,268, the Union health ministry said. A total of 54,91,647 doses were administered in the past 24 hours.

Here are some other updates of the day

  • Canada has announced that it will extend a ban on passenger flights from India till September 21 on account of the Covid-19 risk, Reuters reported. The country had first imposed the ban on April 22, and has since extended it multiple times.
  • Data obtained through genome sequencing in Delhi shows that the Delta variant is the dominant strain in the national Capital, The Times of India reported on Tuesday. The variant was found in at least 80% of the samples in the last three months.
  • The Karnataka High Court has asked the state government to explain why it deferred local body elections till December 2021 because of the pandemic, but allowed religious places to stay open, Bar and Bench reported.
  • The Delhi government on Monday allowed pregnant women to get vaccine doses at health facility sites where they report for their regular check-ups, PTI reported. Pregnant women became eligible for Covid-19 vaccines around a month ago.
  • The Delhi government’s education department has issued guidelines for reopening of schools in the capital. From Monday, schools have been allowed to open for classes 10 to 12. The guidelines call for vaccinating teachers on priority and require explicit consent from parents to send their children to school, reported the Hindustan Times. Students will not be allowed to share books or stationery items with each other. Online classes will continue to be conducted and students who want to attend these classes would be allowed to do so.
  • Over the last three weeks, more than 60% of vaccines doses were administered at rural inoculation centres in India, The Indian Express reported, citing official data. 
  • More than 40% of the districts in India don’t have an RT-PCR lab to conduct Covid-19 tests, even a year and half after the outbreak of the pandemic, Scroll.in has found.
  • China has punished several officials for failing to curb the resurgence of Covid-19, as the country reported nearly 900 symptomatic cases in less than a month, Bloomberg reported. The city of Yangzhou has also given warnings to five officials for mishandling mass testing, and thereby allowing the virus to spread.
  • Covid-19 cases in the United States have averaged 1,00,000 for three days in a row, according to a Reuters tally. This constitutes an increase of 35% over the past week. The states of Louisiana, Florida and Arkansas have reported the most cases in the past week. 
  • Globally, Covid-19 has infected more than 20.33 crore people and caused over 43 lakh deaths since the pandemic broke out in December 2019, according to Johns Hopkins University.