Shomporko Desk:-India crossed one million coronavirus cases on Friday, third just to the United States and Brazil, inciting worries about its preparation to go up against an inevitable surge that could overwhelm hospitals and test the country’s feeble health-care system.
A surge of 34.956 new cases in the previous 24 hours took the national all out to 1,003,832.
The grim milestone comes when a few Indian states are forcing centred lockdowns to stem the outbreak in the midst of distraught endeavours by nearby governments to secure the economy.
So far, three states — Maharashtra, Delhi and Tamil Nadu — have accounted for more than half of total cases.
The India-based pharmaceutical company Zydus Cadila plans to complete late-stage trials for its potential coronavirus vaccine in March 2021 and could produce up to 100 million doses a year if trials are successful, chairman Pankaj Patel said.
Cadila’s vaccine candidate, dubbed ZyCov-D, is one of the dozens being developed around the world to fight the coronavirus.
In the United States, health officials reported more than 75,000 new COVID-19 cases on Thursday, a record daily increase for the seventh time this month, according to a Reuters tally.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the U.S. government’s top infectious diseases expert, has warned that cases could soon top 100,000 a day if Americans do not come together to take steps necessary to halt the spread of the virus.
Deaths reported in Arizona, California, Florida and Texas are largely the reason the U.S. has the highest death toll for COVID-19 of any country, a tally now exceeding 138,000.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security says Canada and the United States have agreed to extend their mutual ban on non-essential travel between the two countries until Aug. 20.
Photo credit: CDC.gov
News source: The Associated Press
