Covid-19 booster dose for all adults from Sunday

Starting from tomorrow, the 18+ population will be eligible to get a booster dose across India. This would be a self-funded vaccination programme, the health ministry has announced. Public health experts have been demanding precautionary vaccine dose for all adults for quite some time now. With pandemic curbs easing and people stepping out for work and leisure, chances of recombination of existing variants and evolution of new strain of the novel coronavirus are extremely high. Hence, the Centre's decision to introduce booster doses is well-timed. Now it will be interesting to see how people respond to this new phase of inoculation programme. Here are the latest Covid-related developments that you should know:

For the second day running, India reported steady uptick in daily coronavirus cases. The health ministry's Saturday bulletin says that the country detected 1,150 new Covid-19 infections in the last 24 hours. In terms of fatalities, the nation witnessed 83 Covid deaths in the span f 1 day, the official data says. The number of active cases in India stand at 11,365 with a reduction of 127 cases today.

Some latest media reports suggest that after Maharashtra, Gujarat has also reported a case of XE variant of the novel coronavirus. While the Maharashtra news was rejected by the Centre, no official response has been issued regarding the Gujarat update.

Meanwhile, United Nations UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has issued a firm warming to the countries regarding the pandemic. The UN top official says that the contagion is far from over. In fact, he added, that Asia is seeing large outbreaks and a new wave of infections is sweeping Europe. Talking about Asia, China remains the epicentre of the fresh outbreak with Shanghai extending the stringent lockdown.

Shanghai reported staggering 21,000 cases, a Reuters report says. The financial hub of China has also widened the testing measures. Apart from Shanghai, other cities of China are also imposing new Covid curbs. Zhengzhou in central Henan province, Shizong county and national capital Beijing are among those regions that are seeing new testing and isolation rules.

In Europe, Germany continues to report high number of cases. The Robert Koch Institute says that the nation detected over 1.5 lakh daily cases in the last 24 hours.