Highlights: Coronavirus cases in Europe surpass 25 million

Surat district of Gujarat recorded 120 cases of coronavirus in the last 24 hours, the state Health Department said on Thursday evening. On the other hand, 173 patients recovered during this period. Surat city reported 101 new cases since Wednesday evening.

Ahmedabad district of Gujarat recorded 133 new coronavirus cases on Thursday, while 137 patients recovered from the infection, the state Health Department said. Ahmedabad's Covid-19 tally rose to 58,652 cases, while the death of two more patients in the last 24 hours pushed the toll to 2,263, said a release by the department.

Turkey reported 12,171 new coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours, health ministry data showed on Wednesday, bringing the country's total number of cases to 2,296,102. It reported 194 related fatalities over the same period, raising the total death toll so far to 22,264.

The French health ministry said on Thursday that 22 cases of new variants of the coronavirus have been detected in France. The ministry also said in a statement that two high-risk clusters that may include the new variant of Covid-19 first detected in Britain have been found in the Brittany and Paris regions.

Rajasthan recorded four more fatalities due to the novel coronavirus on Thursday, taking the Covid-19 death toll in the state to 2,727, according to a health department bulletin. The state also reported 509 new cases on Thursday. The total number of people infected by Covid-19 now stands at 3,11,620 in Rajasthan and out of these 7,468 are under treatment, it said. As per the bulletin, 3,01,425 people have been discharged after treatment till now.

Chhattisgarh on Thursday reported 1,010 Covid-19 cases and seven more deaths, taking the infection count to 2,86,596 and the toll to 3,454, a health official said. The number of recoveries reached 2,74,283 after 104 people were discharged from hospitals and 968 completed their home isolation period.

The tally of active cases stood at 8,859, he said.

Tamil Nadu on Thursday reported 805 fresh Covid-19 cases taking the tally to 8,23,986 and the death toll increased to 12,200 with 12 more fatalities. The active cases dipped to 7,547 with 911 patients getting discharged and cumulatively 8,04,239 people have got cured, a health department bulletin said.

Coronavirus cases in Europe surpassed 25 million on Thursday, according to a Reuters tally, with several countries reinstating or extending lockdowns as a resurgence in the pandemic threatens to overwhelm health services. Europe has recorded at least 25,016,506 cases and 559,863 deaths since the start of the pandemic, recently reporting over a million new cases about every four days.

Jammu and Kashmir's Covid-19 caseload climbed to 1,22,176 on Thursday with 127 fresh infections while three more fatalities pushed the death toll to 1,903, officials said. Of the fresh cases, 106 were from the Jammu division and 21 from the Kashmir division, they said. Jammu district recorded the highest number of fresh cases at 47, followed by 44 in Udhampur district, the officials said.

As many as 665 new Covid-19 cases and seven deaths were reported in Mumbai on Thursday, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) said.

It took the tally of cases in the city to 2,96,984 and the death toll to 11,162.

The financial capital of the country had reported 795 new cases and eight fatalities on Wednesday. With 379 patients recovering from infection, the number of recovered patients increased to 2,77,192, about 93 per cent of total cases, on Thursday.

Uttarakhand's coronavirus tally rose to 92,842 on Thursday with 249 more people testing positive while six more infected patients died on the day, a health bulletin showed.

Karnataka has reported 761 new cases of Covid-19 and seven related fatalities, taking the total number of infections to 9,24,898 and the death toll to 12,131, the Health department said on Thursday. The day also saw 812 patients getting discharged after recovery. Out of the 761 fresh cases reported on Thursday, 399 cases were from Bengaluru Urban alone.

Spain will receive the first batch of the coronavirus vaccine developed by US pharmaceutical company Moderna in 7-10 days, Spanish Health Minister Salvador Illa said on Thursday. On Wednesday, the European Commission authorised the Moderna vaccine, which became the second COVID-19 vaccine approved by the bloc following the authorisation of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine. The contract, signed in November, envisages the purchase by the EU of up to 160 million doses. Spain is expected to receive 16-17 million doses, which will be enough to vaccinate 8-8.5 million people since the vaccine is injected twice. The population of the country is 47 million.

A Covid-19 vaccine developed by China's Sinovac Biotech is 78% effective based on late-stage trial results in Brazil, a person familiar with the study said on Thursday, moving the shot a step closer to regulatory approval in South America's biggest country. The results, closely watched by countries counting on the vaccine to begin mass inoculations, come after Turkish researchers said in December that the vaccine showed 91.25% efficacy based on interim data.

Forty-seven more Covid-19 cases were detected in Muzaffarnagar district, taking the total caseload to 8,232 on Thursday, officials said. Among the fresh cases, 16 medical staff of Muzaffarnagar medical college tested positive for the virus, District Magistrate Selvakumari J said. Also, the active patients count went up to 286 in the district. She said 792 sample results were received of which 47 came out positive. The recovered cases tally went up to 7,842 after 25 people were cured of the infection.