India records 63 new Covid-19 cases, active tally at 1,910

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India logged 63 new coronavirus infections, while the active cases have dipped to 1,910 from 1,925, according to the Union Health Ministry data updated on Monday.

According to news agency PTI, the death toll was recorded at 5,31,896, the data stated.

The Covid-19 case tally stood at 4.49 crore (4,49,93,543) while the national Covid-19 recovery rate has been recorded at 98.81 per cent, the ministry said.

The number of people who have recuperated from the disease surged to 4,44,59,737 and the case fatality rate was recorded at 1.18 per cent.

According to the ministry's website, 220.66 crore doses of Covid-19 vaccine have been administered in the country so far under the nationwide vaccination drive.

Yesterday, India had recorded 90 new coronavirus infections while the active cases have dipped to 1,925. The death toll was recorded at 5,31,895 with two deaths reconciled by Kerala.

On Sunday, Mumbai reported six new cases of Covid-19. The addition of fresh cases took the total tally of infections in the city to 11,63,913, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), said in a health bulletin.

No death was reported on June 18, the death toll in the city remained unchanged at 19,773, the health bulletin said.

The city now has an active caseload of 40 patients, it further said.

The bulletin said that the recovery count increased by seven more patients to touch the total number of recoveries to 11,44,100.

According to the data in the bulletin, Mumbai's overall growth rate of cases between June 11 and june 17 was 0.0005 per cent, and the recovery rate stood at 98.3 per cent.

So far, 188,89,953 Covid-19 tests have been conducted in the city, including 661 samples taken in the past 24 hours, as per civic data.

The caseload doubling time is 140,980 days, as per civic data.

According to a new study, a more equitable access to Covid vaccines could have prevented more than 50 per cent of Covid-19 deaths in 20 lower income countries.

Scientists from the Northeastern University, US, have estimated 518,000 deaths could have been averted if the 20 countries in the study had received the vaccines at the same time as the US and other high income countries and in comparable quantities, using a computational epidemic model.

The countries included in the study were Angola, Kenya, Ghana, Cote d'Ivoire, Mozambique, Uganda, Rwanda, Zambia, Egypt, Morocco, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Bolivia, El Salvador, Honduras, Philippines and Kyrgyzstan.

The study is published in the journal Nature Communications.

The estimation that "thousands and thousands" of lives were lost to vaccine inequity was a "punch in the stomach," said Alessandro Vespignani, director of Northeastern's Network Science Institute and the study's co-author.

(With inputs from PTI)