1. The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control on Wednesday said that the Delta variant could account for 90% of new Covid-19 cases in the European Union by August-end, reported AFP.
  2. India reached a grim milestone on Wednesday as the total number of coronavirus cases in the country crossed the three-crore mark. Since the pandemic began in January 2020, India has recorded 3,00,28,709 infections. As many as 50,848 cases were added over the past 24 hours.
  3. Kerala has reported about 14,372 excess deaths between January 1 and May 31 when compared to the same period between 2015 and 2019. A review of the monthly break-up showed that the excess deaths in Kerala were mostly reported in May
  4. Dr Anurag Agarwal, Director of the Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology, said that there was no evidence to suggest that the Delta variant will cause the possible third coronavirus wave, reported NDTV. He, however, cautioned against lowering guard on the pandemic.  
  5. Vaccines made by pharmaceutical companies AstraZeneca and Pfizer are effective against Delta and Kappa variants, first discovered in India, a study by Oxford University showed.
  6. Around 40 cases of the Delta plus variant of the coronavirus have been found in Maharashtra, Kerala and Madhya Pradesh, the Union health ministry said. Besides these states, Karnataka also recorded its first case of the variant.
  7. A day after achieving a record high vaccination of more than 90 lakh doses, India administered only 54.22 lakh shots of coronavirus vaccines on Tuesday, prompting criticism from the Opposition.
  8. West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee urged the Union government to immediately take steps to ensure that people vaccinated with Covaxin are not restricted to travel to foreign countries, reported PTI. 
  9. Yoga guru Ramdev approached the Supreme Court for a stay on the proceedings related to the first information reports filed against him in multiple states for his comments on modern medicine.
  10. Globally, the coronavirus disease has infected over 17.90 crore people and killed more than 38.80 lakh since the pandemic broke out in December 2019, according to Johns Hopkins University.