Here are the top updates from Wednesday:

  1. West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee dubbed as “hoax” the Centre’s claim that it will fully vaccinate all its citizens above 18 years of age by December, reported NDTV. Banerjee said that the Union government also promised that it would vaccinate all citizens of Bihar before the Assembly elections in October and November 2020, “but nothing happened”.
  2. India recorded 1,32,788 new coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours, taking the country’s tally since the outbreak in January 2020 to 2,83,07,832. As many as 3,207 more fatalities, pushed the toll to 3,35,102.
  3. The Supreme Court said that the Centre’s policy to provide free vaccination for priority groups and replacing it with a paid process for those in the 18-45 age group was “prima facie arbitrary and irrational”.
  4. Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik wrote to his counterparts in all the states, seeking their consensus to demand the Centre to procure coronavirus vaccines for them.
  5. The Kerala Assembly unanimously passed a resolution urging the Centre to provide free Covid-19 vaccines to all the states in a timely manner, amid shortages of doses in the middle of the second wave of the pandemic.
  6. In a plea to the Supreme Court, a petitioner has challenged the Delhi High Court’s decision to allow the Central Vista project work to continue despite the coronavirus pandemic.
  7. The daily Covid-19 cases continued to decline in Delhi on Wednesday with the national Capital registering 576 cases. With this, the total infection count in the city rose to 14,27,439. The toll climbed by 103 to 24,402. Mumbai recorded 925 new cases and 31 deaths, taking the infection count to 7,08,007 and the toll to 14,938. 
  8. The Delhi High Court asked the Aam Aadmi Party government why it started vaccination centres when it knew that it could not provide the second dose of coronavirus vaccine Covaxin on time.
  9. India’s drug regulator on Tuesday waived the requirement to conduct post-launch bridging trials for foreign-made coronavirus vaccines, in a move that is expected to bolster the availability of shots. The Drugs Controller General of India has also done away with the mandatory testing of every batch of such vaccines at the Central Drugs Laboratory in Kasauli.
  10. Covid-19 has now infected over 17.10 crore people and killed over 35.61 lakh in the world since the pandemic broke out in December 2019, according to Johns Hopkins University.