Coronavirus live updates: Sputnik V vaccine soft launch scaled up in Delhi, Mumbai, other cities, says Dr Reddy's

Serum Institute of India and Bharat Biotech are seeking higher prices for Covid-19 vaccines from the Centre amid concerns that the cost of Covishield and Covaxin shots in private hospitals is already high.The Centre’s procurement price has been in the range of Rs 150-200 per jab, for the orders placed with the companies from January onwards.

Governor Andrew Cuomo said Tuesday that 70% of adults in New York have received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine, a threshold he said the state would celebrate by easing many of its remaining social distancing rules and shooting off fireworks.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now called the Delta variant of the novel coronavirus, also known as B.1.617.2, a "variant of concern". According to the agency there is 'mounting evidence' that the Delta variant, which was first reported in India, shows increased transmissibility, potential reduction in neutralisation by some monoclonal antibody treatments under emergency authorisation and potential reduction in neutralisation from sera after vaccination in lab tests.

To be prepared for the third wave of Covid-19, the BMC will import 33 neonatal intensive care ventilators from Argentina and install these in paediatric wards being readied for children infected with the coronavirus. Manufactured by Tecme, each ventilator will cost the BMC about Rs 13 lakh. The ventilators are expected to be installed in two months. The standing committee of the BMC recently gave its approval to place the orders for the neonatal intensive care ventilators.

A massive data scrubbing exercise is under way on CoWin to find and remove names of people who registered twice on the system—under different phone numbers— to get their second vaccine dose. Public health officials said an assessment has shown that Maharashtra has at least 1 lakh beneficiaries (mostly healthcare and frontline workers) with completed two-dose schedules still showing as due for their second doses. It’s unclear how many such beneficiaries there are in other states.

Use of CoWin for India’s vaccination programme might have raised some questions around ‘digital divide’ in the country, but data released by the health ministry on Tuesday shows that the platform didn’t deter those eligible as there were enough facilitators to help them out for on-site registration and walk-in vaccinations.

The US Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday authorized around 14 million more doses of Johnson & Johnson's Covid-19 vaccine manufactured at a problem-plagued Baltimore factory, according to a source familiar with the plans. The FDA confirmed it had authorized a batch of the one-dose vaccine made at Emergent BioSolutions Inc's plant, but did not say how many doses were in the batch.

Making it clear that pre-registration for vaccination through online registration and prior booking of appointment is not mandatory to avail Covid vaccination services, the health ministry on Tuesday said anyone aged 18 and above can go directly to the nearest vaccination centre where the vaccinator performs the onsite registration and provides vaccination at the same visit.

With the weekly positivity rate down to 4.8% between June 8-14 and restrictions being eased across states, the government has cautioned that precautions are critical to ensure that gains made so far are not lost and there is a need to identify hotspots and implement localised containment strategies.

The comparative data of the first and second wave dispels the impression that more young people and children were at risk in the recent surge in Covid infections as there is no significant change in the proportion of persons who contracted the disease in the different age groups.

Asserting that vaccines approved by the government are safe and the only weapon against the Coronavirus, the government on Tuesday said deaths reported post-vaccination standing at 488 were a small percentage of the number of doses given, but this did not mean they were due to vaccination.

The total number of Covid-19 vaccine doses administered in the country has crossed the 26 crore-mark, the health ministry said on Tuesday.