HIGHLIGHTS: Delhi reports 1,617 new cases, 41 deaths

29,000 cold chain points, 45,000 ice-lined refrigerators, 300 solar refrigerators are ready to be used for Covid vaccination drive as per the Health Ministry.

The Health Ministry said that India had a case fatality of 1.45% which was among the lowest in the world.

The Health Ministry said that over 15.55 crore Covid-19 tests have been conducted so far and the cumulative positivity rate has dropped to 6.37%

Bulgaria reported 2,095 new cases of coronavirus in the past 24 hours, taking the country's total to 181,544. 150 new fatalities were also reported in the same time period, pushing the death toll to 5,838, a total of 85,578 individuals have recovered from coronavirus so far.

Germany has started pushing for approval of the Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine, that has been already approved for emergency use in Britain, US, and Canada. German news agency dpa reported on Tuesday that country's health minister Jens Spahn commented “our goal is an approval before Christmas so that we can still start vaccinating this year, also in Germany.”

Vice admiral Srikant, the senior-most submariner of the Indian Navy, passed away on Tuesday morning from Covid-19 related complications. The vice admiral was due to retire on December 31. Defence minister Rajnath Singh condoled his death on Twitter.

Deeply pained at the untimely and sudden demise of DG Seabird, Vice Admiral Srikant.

The MoD and the Indian Navy will always remember his stellar contributions and remarkable service to the nation.

My deepest condolences to his bereaved family and friends. Om Shanti!

— Rajnath Singh (@rajnathsingh) December 15, 2020

Just three days after surpassing the 70 million mark the global caseload of coronavirus is all set to close in on 73 million, reported John Hopkins University. United States continues to be the worst affected country in the world followed by Indian and Brazil. A total number if 41,257,161 patients have recovered worldwide

Nearly half of Singapore's migrant population residing in dormitories have tested positive for Covid-19, said the government. The prevalence rate of Covid-19 in the dormitories is currently 47%, the manpower ministry said in a statement. Outside of the migrant dormitories the prevalence rate stood at 0.25%.

In the last 24 hours Telangana has recorded 491 new cases of coronavirus (Covid-19) taking the total to to over 2.78 lakh. 3 people succumbed to the virus pushing the total death toll to 1499. The state's recovery rate currently stands at 96.85 per cent.

India reported 22,065 new cases of coronavirus on Tuesday, pushing the total tally to 9,906,165. The total number of active cases continued to be under the 400,000 mark, with 12766 active cases registered in the last 24 hours. 354 people succumbed to the virus taking the cumulative death toll to 143709.

UK's Health Secretary Matt Hancock announced on Monday that London will start imposing the highest tier of Covid-19 restriction in Britain following a surge in infection rates. A new variant of the coronavirus has been detected and authorities are cautious about the affect it might have on vaccine efficiency.

Canada administered its first doses of a Covid-19 vaccine on Monday. Five frontline workers in Ontario became the first people to receive the vaccine jab. The Canadian government plans on administering 249,000 doses this month.

US hospitals on Monday began immunising people against the coronavirus disease while the tally of fatalities in the country surpassed the 300,000-mark. US currently has over 16 million active cases.