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to 20,18,646. The positivity rate also rose to 0.68 per cent from Monday’s 0.41 per cent, the bulletin said.
The cumulative number of COVID-19 vaccine doses administered in the country crossed 190.65 crore on Tuesday, the Union health ministry said. More than 12 lakh vaccine doses were administered till 7 pm on Tuesday, it said, adding that the daily vaccination tally is expected to go up with the compilation of the final reports by late night.
A total of 38,476 precaution doses of the vaccines were administered to beneficiaries aged 18-59 years till 7 pm, taking the total number of such doses given in this age-group to 11,78,161, according to the ministry’s data. Also, the first dose of the Covid vaccine has been administered to more than 3.08 crore children in the age group of 12-14 years.
The head of the World Health Organization called on Pfizer to make its COVID-19 treatment more widely available in poorer countries, saying Tuesday that the pharmaceutical company’s deal allowing generic producers to make the drug was insufficient.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during a news briefing that Pfizer’s treatment was still too expensive. He noted that most countries in Latin America had no access to Pfizers drug, Paxlovid, which has been shown to cut the risk of COVID-19 hospitalization or death by up to 90%.
“We remain concerned that low- and middle-income countries remain unable to access antivirals, Tedros said. The WHO chief warned that the unequal distribution of COVID-19 drugs could ultimately mirror the grossly disproportionate distribution of coronavirus vaccines.
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