India's COVID tally 99,79,447 with 22,890 new cases

With 22,890 new Coronavirus infections and 338 deaths in the past 24 hours, India's overall tally stood at 99,79,447 on Friday, while the death toll reached 1,44,789, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare said. In the past 11 months, 95,20,827 people have recovered, of whom 31,087 recovered in the last 24 hours. As of the ministry's data on Friday, there are 3,13,831 active cases. The recovery rate stands at 95.40 per cent, and the fatality rate is 1.45 as per cent.

A total of 15,89,18,646 samples have been tested for Covid-19 till now. Of these, 11,13,406 samples were tested on Thursday, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) said. Maharashtra continues to be the worst-hit state with 18,84,773 cases to date. Over 70 per cent of the daily new cases were being reported by 10 states and union territory and in a random order they are Kerala, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Delhi, Chhattisgarh, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh.

As many as eight Covid-19 vaccine candidates are under different stages of clinical trials which could be ready for authorisation in near future, including three indigenous vaccines. It includes Astrazeneca and Oxford university developed and Serum Institute of India manufactured Covishield; Covaxin by Bharat Biotech Limited; ZyCoV-D by Zydus Cadila; the Russian vaccine candidate Sputnik-V; NVX-CoV2373 by SII; HGCO19 by Geneva, and two unlabelled vaccines -- Recombinant Protein Antigen based vaccine by Biological E Limited and Inactivated rabies vector platform by Bharat Biotech.