Coronavirus Update  

India will once again test its preparedness today ahead of launching the world's largest vaccination drive against Coronavirus. Here's what you should know about the second nationwide vaccination dry run.

Billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates has hailed India's scientific innovation and capability in its endeavour to tackle the Coronavirus pandemic. 

Even before the first Coronavirus vaccine is rolled out in India, are people becoming complacent with regard to the pandemic? Some recent decisions by state and district authorities across the country defy the logic in the fight against Coronavirus.

The Coronavirus vaccine announcement has brought to the forefront a slugfest within the Congress.

The number of daily new Covid-19 cases in India remained below 20,000 for the third consecutive day. According to the data released by the government, there are 2,43,953 active cases of coronavirus infection in the country which comprise 2.36 per cent of the total caseload. Here are some other updates.

Even as India moves forward to roll out the Coronavirus vaccine, the country successfully completed its Coronavirus vaccination dry run yesterday. In a massive nation-wide exercise, an end-to-end drill was conducted in all States and Union Territories at 286 session sites spread across 125 districts. 

The Indian Council of Medical Research has announced that its Pune-based National Institute of virology has managed to successfully isolate and culture the UK strain of the Coronavirus from the UK arrivals.

States across India are today conducting a dry run to check the best way to vaccinate people against Coronavirus and to identify loopholes in logistics and training that need to be plugged before the first vaccine shot is rolled out.

Addressing a gathering via video conferencing while laying the foundation stone for a new All India Institute of Medical Sciences in Gujarat's Rajkot, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that preparation is on full swing to mobilise and distribute India-manufactured vaccine to everyone.

Here's a roundup of the top stories at this hour

The UK government accepted the recommendation from the Medicines and Healthcare products regulatory agency to authorise Oxford University/AstraZeneca's Covid-19 vaccine for use.
 

Revising its earlier decision to keep schools and colleges in Mumbai shut till December 31, the city's civic body Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation noted that the second wave of Coronavirus in other countries has forced a rethink on the issue.

The dry run, which was aimed at end-to-end testing of the Coronavirus vaccination process, was undertaken in Krishna district in Andhra Pradesh, Rajkot and Gandhinagar in Gujarat, Ludhiana and Shaheed Bhagat Singh Nagar (Nawanshahr) in Punjab and Sonitpur and Nalbari districts in Assam.

Six people who returned to India from the United Kingdom recently have tested positive for the new strain of the virus.

The new strain of Coronavirus has triggered fresh wave of anxiety and fresh cases in United Kingdom and beyond. A week since it was first identified, the new strain is already responsible for 60 percent of the cases in the country.