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India Reaches Record Number of Daily COVID Cases

VOA News

   India's health ministry saidMondaythat ithasrecordedan all-time
   high103,558new coronavirus cases, the highest daily tally this year in
   the South Asian nation.

   Mumbai, India's financial capital and the capital of Maharashtra state,
   is now under stringent lockdown measures.About half of the country's
   new cases of the viruswererecorded inMaharashtra.

   Nawab Malik, a minister in the state government,saida nightly curfew
   from 8 p.m. to 7 a.m. local time would be imposed starting
   Mondayspeaking to reporters. Shopping malls, cinemas,
   bars,restaurantsand places of worship will close starting Monday
   evening. A complete lockdown will go into effect on weekends.

   Only two nations have more confirmed cases than India, which currently
   has more than 12.5million infections, according to the Johns Hopkins
   Coronavirus Resource Center. The United States has 30.7 million cases,
   while Brazil has close to 13 million infections.

   Millions of people worldwide were under new lockdown restrictions
   during the Easter weekend, because of infections that have surged
   despite the continued rollout of vaccination campaigns.

   The U.S. announcedlast week thatit is the first nation to fully
   vaccinate 100 million people.The announcement came just more than a
   week after President Joe Biden's administrationreached its goal of
   administering 100 million single shots.

   Cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, however,
   remain on the rise in some regions of the United States.

   Compared with the U.S., European nations are struggling to get
   vaccination programs up to speed.

   The World Health Organization said only 10% of Europe's population have
   received one vaccine dose, and just 4% have received two doses. One
   reason for the lag among European nations is their reliance on the
   AstraZeneca vaccine.

   There have been reports of blood clotting in some people who have
   received the shot,butthedrug makerrejects this assertion and has found
   no evidence connecting the vaccine with blood clots. Nevertheless,
   Canada, France,Germanyand the Netherlandsareallowingthe use of the
   vaccine only in older people.

   Britain's Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory
   Agencyhasurgedpeople to continue taking the AstraZeneca vaccine, saying
   it was unsure ifthe vaccinewas causing the clots while acknowledging
   that seven of the 30 recipients who developed clots in the country had
   died. More than 18 million doses of the vaccine have been administered.

   Britain is reliant on the AstraZeneca vaccine, developed at the
   University of Oxford, toinoculateabout 46% of its population. It also
   uses the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. In Britain, new coronavirus
   infections are hovering around 3,400 a day, and on Saturday, it
   recorded 10 coronavirus-related deaths, the lowest daily number since
   September.

   In France, four people died of blood clots after receiving the
   AstraZeneca shot. The family of a 38-year-old woman has filed a
   criminal complaint seeking a manslaughter investigation.

   Meanwhile, the Emergent BioSolutions facilityin Baltimore, Maryland,
   where the single doseJohnson & Johnson vaccine is being produced in the
   U.S. announced late Sunday that it has received a $23 million
   modification to its contract with the U.S. Department of Health and
   Human Services.

   "The $23 million will be used for the purchase of biologics
   manufacturing equipment specific to Johnson & Johnson's COVID-19
   vaccine,"Emergentsaid in a statement.

   It was recently revealed that Emergent workers accidentally used
   ingredients from both Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca when
   manufacturing a large batch of vaccines. The mistake was discovered,
   however, before the shots were shipped.

   TheAstraZenecashot has not yet been approved for use in the U.S., but
   the U.S. has entered into agreements to ship millions of the
   AstraZeneca vaccines to Canada and Mexico.

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