India detected 36,011 new Covid-19 cases in the 24 hours ending 8 am Sunday, taking the country’s overall tally to over 96.44 lakh.

Out of the total cases, active cases have further dropped to 4.03 lakh and 91,00,792 people have recovered so far with over 41,000 recoveries reported in the last 24 hours. With 482 new fatalities, the country’s death toll mounted to 1,40,182.

Pfizer India Saturday requested an emergency use authorization for its Covid-19 vaccine in India, becoming the first pharmaceutical company to do so. The move comes after Pfizer’s parent company received such a clearance in the UK and Bahrain. In its application submitted to the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI), it has asked permission to import the Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-19 mRNA vaccine  for sale and distribution in the country.

Currently, India has five vaccines in advance phases of clinical trials with the Serum Institute of India conducting phase-3 trials of the Oxford-Astrazeneca and Bharat Biotech in collaboration with ICMR conducting trials for its indigenously developed vaccine candidate Covaxin.

Meanwhile, a plea was filed on Saturday in the Supreme Court seeking a direction to the Centre to ensure refund of “exorbitant” amounts charged by private labs and hospitals for conducting RT-PCR tests to detect COVID-19.

source: The Indian Express 

BDST: 1202 HRS, DEC 06, 2020
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