1. India on Tuesday registered 47,703 new cases and 654 fresh fatalities in the last 24 hours. With this, the country’s tally is now 14,83,156 and toll stands at 33,425. More than 9.5 lakh people have recovered so far.
  2. The number of coronavirus cases in Kerala crossed the 20,000-mark after 1,167 new Covid-19 infections were reported. The total tally of infections in the state is now 20,896, including 67 deaths. In Delhi, 1,056 new infections and 28 deaths were recorded. The total number of coronavirus cases in the Capital stood at 1,32,275 and the toll is 3,881. Meanwhile Tamil Nadu reported 6,792 cases and 88 deaths. With this, the total tally of infections in the state rose to 2,27,688 and the toll is 3,659.
  3. The government has identified five sites across the country for the third and final phase of the human trials of the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine. The five sites are at INCLEN Trust International in Palwal, Haryana; KEM in Pune; the Society for Health Allied Research in Hyderabad; the National Institute of Epidemiology in Chennai; and Christian Medical College in Vellore.
  4. Mumbai reported only 717 new coronavirus cases on Tuesday, the lowest in three months. The city’s total tally of infections stood at 1,10,846 and the toll is 6,184. Maharashtra registered 7,717 cases and 282 deaths, taking the state’s total to 3,91,440. The toll climbed to 14,165. 
  5. The Sassoon General Hospital in Pune, Maharashtra, has claimed to have reported India’s first case of vertical transmission of the coronavirus from a mother to her child through the placenta. Vertical transmission takes place when the baby is in the uterus and the virus crosses the placental barrier. 
  6. Congress MP Shashi Tharoor on Monday criticised reports of an extended lockdown in Thiruvananthapuram, his constituency, saying that three weeks of a shutdown have not stopped the spread of the novel coronavirus. The initial lockdown will end on Tuesday.  
  7. The Odisha government on Monday night allowed the cremation of the bodies of people suspected of having Covid-19 without waiting for their test results, to avoid a delay in the final rites.
  8. United States biotechnology company Moderna and pharmaceutical giant Pfizer launched late-stage trials of the coronavirus vaccine. The trials will be conducted on 30,000 individuals each, and the companies hope to launch the first vaccines by the end of the year. The US government is funding the projects of both companies.  
  9. The Delhi High Court on Monday pulled up the Aam Aadmi Party government for choosing Rapid Antigen Testing, RAT, which has a high rate of false negative results, over the RT/PCR or Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction, testing method. The High Court cited the serological survey carried out by the National Centre for Disease Control to question the government’s decision to go with rapid tests. The survey revealed that 23.48% of Delhi residents had antibodies – that is, they may have at some point been exposed to the coronavirus. 
  10. The global coronavirus count has now crossed 1.65 crore while the toll is more than 6.55 lakh, according to the Johns Hopkins University. Over 96.1 lakh people have recovered.