Coronavirus: Maharashtra has the highest number of coronavirus cases in India

Mumbai:

Maharashtra today reported 9,518 coronavirus cases in the highest single-day spike. Some 258 died in the last 24 hours, government data shows. The total number of COVID-19 cases in Maharashtra is now 3,10,455. The fatalities stand at 11,854.

Mumbai reported 1,038 coronavirus cases and 64 deaths in the last 24 hours, while Pune reported 1,812 new cases. The recovery rate in the state is 54.62 per cent, positivity rate 19.85 per cent and mortality rate 3.82 per cent.

Maharashtra has the highest coronavirus cases in the country, followed by Tamil Nadu and Delhi.

Meanwhile, the AIIMS ethics committee on Saturday allowed human clinical trial of the homemade COVID-19 vaccine candidate Covaxin, following which the top hospital is likely to begin the exercise by enrolling healthy volunteers from Monday.

AIIMS Delhi is among the 12 sites selected by the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) for conducting phase I and II human trials of Covaxin, news agency PTI reported.

In phase I, the vaccine would be tested on 375 volunteers and a maximum of 100 of them would be from AIIMS.

“The AIIMS ethics committee gave its approval for starting the human clinical trial of the indigenously developed Covaxin today. Healthy volunteers having no comorbid conditions and without a history of COVID-19, aged more than 18 years and less than 55 years, would be eligible to participate in the randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial,” said Dr Sanjay Rai, professor at the Centre for Community Medicine at AIIMS.

The number of confirmed infections worldwide has passed 14.2 million, out of which 3.7 million are in the United States. There are over two million in Brazil and more than a million in India. The World Health Organisation again reported a single-day record of new infections with 2,59,848.