India sees new COVID-19 cases, reviews vaccine strategy

By Ahmad Adil

New Delhi, India (AA) - India has held a high-level review meeting on the country's COVID-19 vaccination strategy, and recorded on Saturday over 46,000 new cases.

According to an update released by the Indian Health Ministry, 46,232 new cases were registered, taking the total mark to over 9.05 million, with 564 additional fatalities, raising the death toll to 132,726.

The country's Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday night said he held a review meeting on the country's coronavirus vaccination strategy.

"Held a meeting to review India's vaccination strategy and the way forward. Important issues related to progress of vaccine development, regulatory approvals and procurement were discussed," Modi tweeted.

"Reviewed various issues like prioritisation of population groups, reaching out to HCWs [healthcare workers], cold-chain Infrastructure augmentation, adding vaccinators and tech platform for vaccine roll-out," he added.

The distribution of a COVID-19 vaccine to every Indian citizen is seen as a big challenge for the Indian government as it lacks a proper distribution system, but a planning is underway, according to the government officials.

While India has officially reported a decline in overall cases and registered less than 50,000 daily new patients nationwide for the last two weeks, the capital New Delhi, along with many other cities, has been witnessing a rise in new infections.

Local media reported that the government in the western Gujarat state has imposed a curfew in a few cities to stem the spread of the virus.

On Friday, the number of coronavirus cases crossed the 9 million mark after the country recorded over 45,000 new infections. Experts believe the number of infections in the country is higher than the officially reported tally.

“We have a figure of 9 million now, which is a tip of an iceberg but we don’t know the size of the iceberg. I think the real cases are much higher in the country,” Thekkekara Jacob John, an Indian virologist and veteran vaccine researcher, told Anadolu Agency.