COVID-19: Death toll crosses 1.5L-mark; second vaccination dry run on January 8

New Delhi: India's COVID-19 death toll increased to 1,50,114 on Wednesday with 264 people succumbing to the disease in 24 hours. With this, India became the third country to record 1.5 lakh fatalities after the United States and Brazil. The caseload rose to 1,03,74,932 with 18,088 infections being reported in a day, while the recoveries are nearing one crore. Also, the Union Health Ministry on Wednesday said that the number of people who have tested positive for the new UK variant of SARS-CoV-2 in the country has climbed to 71.

As a simulation of the actual execution of the COVID-19 vaccine roll-out that is expected to begin in a few days, another round of dry run will be conducted in all districts across states and UTs, except UP and Haryana, on January 8 to ensure efficient planning and management of the immunisation process.

Each district will identify three types of session sites, similar to the previous dry run conducted on January 2, including a public health facility (district hospital/medical college), private health facility and rural or urban outreach sites, the Union health ministry said on Wednesday.

In this regard, a meeting of Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan with the health ministers of states and Union territories is scheduled to take place on January 7 to guide them on conducting the dry run, the ministry said.

"The vaccine dry run will be conducted on January 8 in all districts across India, except for UP and Haryana. COVID-19 vaccine dry run has already been conducted in all districts in UP on January 5 and Haryana is conducting it in all its districts tomorrow (Thursday)," an official source said.

"The Central government is gearing up for the roll-out of COVID-19 vaccine across the country. Union Ministry of Health has been pro-actively carrying out the preparations for roll-out of COVID-19 vaccine, in collaboration with states and UTs and all stakeholders, over the past couple of months to ensure that the preparations for roll-out are on track," the ministry said in a statement.

Meanwhile, the number of people who have recuperated from the disease surged to 99,97,272 pushing the national recovery rate to 96.36 per cent. The COVID-19 case fatality rate stands at 1.45 per cent, according to the Union Health Ministry data updated on Wednesday.

The COVID-19 active caseload remained below 3 lakh for the 16th consecutive day. There are 2,27,546, active cases of Coronavirus infections in the country which comprises 2.19 per cent of the total caseload, the data stated.

According to the ICMR, 17,74,63,405 samples have been tested up to January 5 with 9,31,408 samples being tested on Tuesday.