The good news of the day when it comes to the COVID-19 situation and demonization drive against this dreaded infection. Covaxin, which is Bharat Biotech’s indigenous vaccine against COVID-19 is not in the clinical trial mode anymore.
The moment Bharat Biotech Covaxin got its interim efficacy data, which is showing the efficacy of up to 81%. As per the source, Bharat Biotech approach CDSCO which is the subject expert committee of the drug regulator, and asked for the removal of the tag of the vaccine, which is for all this while being in the clinical trial mode.
The developers of the vaccine have also said that there is hesitancy when it comes to Covaxin because all this while this vaccine has the tag of the clinical trial mode. In that sense, it’s a good thing that a vaccine named Covishield has been developed by the Serum Institute of India.
Therefore, these vaccines have now come in the category of restricted use authorization. It is now available for emergency use authorization. The bad news of the day when it comes to the Covid-19 pandemic situation in the country is that India which up until the month of January early this year was reporting less than 10,000 cases round about eight to 9000 cases on a daily basis, and cases were hovering around 10,000 or 11,000 marks often has now reported more than 22,000 cases close to 23,000 cases on a daily basis.
A couple of states are in fact seeing a surge in cases which is essentially pushing up the national tally of the total number of new infections. Punjab for example is reporting 1300 cases, Tamil Nadu and Kerala is reporting close to 2500 cases on a daily basis.
But the number one concern continues to be Maharashtra which is reporting more than 13,000 cases in cities such as Mumbai, Pune, Nagpur, and Amravati. These are the areas of concern. There has been a partial lockdown that has been announced in the city of Nagpur from the 15th of March onwards, up until the 21st of March, which is going to see government officers having 25% occupancy of their total capacity.
Some other restrictions here and there essentially are going to be a conditional lockdown in the city of Nagpur. In other places, night curfew also continues, these measures are being undertaken. But Maharashtra continues to worry, accounting for more than 60% of the total number of cases in the country on a daily basis pretty much.
