India in touch with Russia over Sputnik 5 Covid vaccine

Aditi Tandon

Advertisement

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, August 25

India is in communication with Russia over the recently approved and registered Sputnik 5 vaccine, the government said on Tuesday.

“Countries are in communication. Initial information has been shared and some detailed information is awaited,” Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan said today.

He also said as on date 172 member nations of the UN had joined COVAX, the multilateral vaccine procurement system developed by the WHO with the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Initiative and global vaccine giant GAVI.

“COVAX pools the vaccine requirement and supply situation of member nations and has so far done this in respect of nine vaccine candidates under development,” said Bhushan noting that while testing in India had risen exponentially touching 3,68,25,520 today, the cumulative positivity rate of COVID is actually declining.

On August 13 when we conducted 2,68,45,688 tests the COVID positivity rate was 8.93 pc and on August 25 with nearly 3.6 crore tests the positivity rate is down to 8.60 pc.

“While the tests have risen exponentially there is a steady decline in the positivity rate,” said Bhushan noting as hugely positive the fact that out of 31,67,323 COVID cases today, 24,04,585 have recovered leaving 70,438 people on management.

Recovery rate is now 75.92 per cent and recoveries are 3.4 times active cases which make up only 22.24 pc of total COVID cases.

“In the last 24 hours we have seen a record reduction of active cases. Among the active cases, 2.70 pc are on oxygen support, 1.92 pc in ICU and 0.29 pc on ventilators,” the Health Secretary said.

Gender analysis shows out of all 58,390 people who have died so far, 69 per cent are males and 31 per cent females.

Age wise, 51 pc deaths are in plus 60 years, 36 pc in 45 to 60 years, 11 per cent in 26 to 44 years and one pc each in 18 to 25 years and under 17 years.

Among top achievements the government cited today was the rise in testing from 363 per million on August 1 to 609 per million today.

Case fatality rate has dropped to 1.84 per cent due to early detection from aggressive testing, said ICMR DG Balram Bhargava.

He said India had gone from one test on January to one million this week and cost of test kits had fallen from RS 2,000 per kit in January to Rs 300 now due to huge indigenous capacity development.