Active Covid-19 cases in India drop below 4 lakh

People violate Covid rules as they wait for their turn to get vaccinated, at Ghaziabad, UP, on Tuesday. Pic/PTI

India logged 31,222 fresh novel Coronavirus cases and 290 fatalities in a span of 24 hours, according to the government's updated data on Tuesday morning. The number of active cases dropped below 4 lakh, with a decrease of 12,010 infections in 24 hours.

The active cases had risen past 4 lakh last week. The daily positivity rate was recorded as 2.05 per cent, while the weekly positivity rate was recorded at 2.56 per cent.

Meanwhile, a study published in the Nature Journal on Tuesday stated that the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2, which has become the dominant strain in India and many other countries, most likely spread through its ability to evade neutralising antibodies and increased infectivity. The B.1.617.2 or Delta variant was first observed in India in the late 2020, and has since spread around the globe.

The international team of researchers combined lab-based experiments and epidemiology of vaccine breakthrough infections, showing that the Delta variant is better at replicating and spreading than other commonly-observed variants.

"There's also evidence that neutralising antibodies produced as a result of previous infection or vaccination are less effective at stopping this variant," said Professor Ravindra Gupta from the University of Cambridge in the UK, and one of the study's senior authors.

"These factors are likely to have contributed to the devastating epidemic wave in India during the first quarter of 2021, where as many as half of the cases were individuals who had previously been infected with an earlier variant," Gupta noted.

The researchers also analysed over 100 infected health workers at three Delhi hospitals, nearly all of whom had been vaccinated against. They found the Delta variant to be transmitted between vaccinated staff to a greater extent than the Alpha variant.

3,30,58,843
Total no. of Coronavirus cases in India so far

4,41,042
Total no. of deaths due to the virus in India so far

3,92,864
Total no. of active cases in India

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