India has become the second country after the United States to cross 1 crore coronavirus cases with the addition of 25,153 fresh cases in the last 24 hours.
- Over 95.5 lakh patients have recovered from the deadly virus and over 1.45 lakh patients have succumbed to the disease in the country so far.
- The country has seen "a steep rise" in recoveries, from 50,000 in May to over 95 lakh in December, the government said this morning.
- "Recoveries are more than 30 times the active cases (currently only 3.14% of total cases)," the centre said.
- Earlier this week, 22,065 new cases were reported in a day, which was the lowest single-day figure in five months.
- ICMR has said a total of 16,00,90,514 samples have been tested upto December 18 and 11,71,868 samples were tested on December 18 itself.
- Currently six coronavirus vaccines are undergoing clinical trials in India and are in different stages of development. Meanwhile, three vaccines have sought emergency use authorisation (EUA) in India.
- The fatality rate stood at 1.45 per cent this morning, while the positivity rate stood at 2.14 per cent.
- With 18.88 lakh cases, Maharashtra has logged the highest number of cases in the country followed by Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Delhi.
- The government has said that COVID vaccines will be voluntary while underlining that the vaccine introduced in India will be as effective as any vaccine developed by other countries.
- India has enough capacity to produce COVID-19 vaccines for its needs and also export it to other countries that need its help, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Friday.