Here are the top updates from Thursday:

  1. The coronavirus transmission within households in Kerala has been rising, accounting for around 35% of the new cases, state Health Minister Veena George said, The Deccan Herald reported. “This is due to laxity in maintaining social distancing norms in homes,” she added. Kerala is currently reporting the most number of coronavirus cases in the country. In the last 24 hours, the state recorded 30,077 new cases, taking the cumulative tally since the pandemic began to 39,13,506.
  2. Union Home Secretary Ajay Bhalla directed Kerala and Maharashtra to intensify efforts to rein in the pandemic. He asked them to focus on contact tracing and vaccination. According to official data, Kerala is the only state in the country reporting over one lakh active infections. The Opposition Congress said the Pinarayi Vijayan government has failed in tackling the health crisis. “A serious intervention is needed from the state and Centre,” Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee Working President PT Thomas said. “People are in a panic.”
  3. India on Thursday morning recorded 46,164 new coronavirus cases, pushing the infection count in the country to 3,25,58,530 since the pandemic first broke out in January last year. The number of daily cases is 22.7% higher than Wednesday’s count of 37,593. With 607 deaths, the toll climbed to 4,36,365. So far, 3,17,88,440 people have recovered from the infection. The number of active cases rose to 3,33,725.
  4. Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan said that the second wave of the coronavirus was not yet over and urged people to follow Covid-appropriate behaviour during festivals in September and October. Bhushan said the two months would be crucial in the management of the coronavirus pandemic.
  5. The Covid-19 vaccination programme for children, aged between 12 and 17, would be rolled out by October, the government’s inoculation panel chief NK Arora said.
  6. Serum Institute of India has told the Indian government that the company will supply around 20 crore doses of its coronavirus vaccine Covishield in September, the Hindustan Times reported. The company’s director of government and regulatory affairs Prakash Kumar Singh wrote to the Centre informing about the decision. The number of doses is twice as much Serum Institute had earlier promised the government.
  7. The Centre told the Kerala High Court that the 84-day gap between two doses of the Covishield vaccine was fixed to increase the efficacy of the vaccine, PTI reported. The court had asked the Centre if the decision was based on efficacy or availability of the vaccines.
  8. A member of the US Food and Drug Administration’s vaccine advisory committee, Paul Offit, has said that with more than one lakh people are hospitalised due to the coronavirus disease, adding that the pandemic situation was worse as compared to the same time last year, CNN reported.
  9. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern defended her “Covid Zero” policy of eliminating all cases of coronavirus amid fears of an outbreak of the Delta variant in the country, AFP reported. However, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said that it was “absurd” to try to eliminate all cases of the more contagious Delta variant.
  10. Globally, Covid-19 has infected more than 21.42 crore people and led to over 44.68 lakh deaths since the beginning of the pandemic in December 2019, according to Johns Hopkins University.