Covid-19: Daily cases on the rise in India again

Visitors at a community Durga puja pandal on Covid-19 theme, in Kolkata, on Wednesday. Pic/PTI

India logged 18,987 fresh Coronavirus cases, taking the infection tally to 3,40,20,730 on Thursday, while the national Covid recovery rate increased to 98.07 per cent, according to the Union Health Ministry's data.

The death toll climbed to 4,51,435 with 246 fresh fatalities, the data updated at 8 am showed. The active cases have declined to 2,06,586, the lowest in 215 days. A decrease of 1067 cases has been recorded in the active caseload in a span of 24 hours.

Andaman tribes at risk

Some isolated populations of India like the Onge and Jarawa tribes of the Andaman islands have a higher genetic risk for Covid-19, according to a study led by researchers at Council of Scientific and Industrial Research Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CSIR-CCMB) Hyderabad and Banaras Hindu University (BHU), Varanasi.

The study, published in the journal Genes and Immunity, suggests that the government should consider high priority protection and utmost care of these isolated groups, so that "we should not lose some of the living treasures of modern human evolution".

"There might be some speculations on the effect of Covid-19 among isolated populations, however, for the first time we have used the genomic data to access the risk of it on them, said Gyaneshwer Chaubey, a professor of molecular anthropology at BHU. "This approach would be useful to quantify the risk of a population for Covid-19, " he told PTI.

"The study has noted that these tribal populations live in protected areas and the general public is not allowed to interact with them. However, seeing number of cases at the island among the general population, they are at greater risk mainly from illegal intruders and health workers," Chaubey added.

3,40,20,730
Total no. of Coronavirus cases in India so far

4,51,435
Total no. of deaths due to the virus in India so far

2,06,586
Total no. of active cases in India

This story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed, agencies. Mid-day accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability, trustworthiness, reliability and data of the text. Mid-day management/mid-day.com reserves the sole right to alter, delete or remove (without notice) the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever