The number of coronavirus infections in India crossed the 3 million mark with 69,239 new cases reported on Sunday even as the country opened up various sectors from a lockdown that ground businesses to a halt and hurt economic growth, report agencies.
With the fifth straight day of more than 60,000 new cases, India's tally stands at 3.04 million, federal health ministry data showed, behind only the United States and Brazil. Deaths in India from Covid-19 rose by 912 to 56,706.
India on Sunday issued guidelines to open up its media production industry with norms for social distancing, crowd management and sanitisation.
"The general principles behind the SOP will help create a safe working environment for cast and crew in the industry," Prakash Javadekar, India's union minister for information and broadcasting said in a tweet.
The pandemic has killed at least 809,445 people worldwide since surfacing in China late last year, according www.worldometers.info tally from official sources Sunday.
More than 23.42 million cases have been registered in 210 countries and territories.
The United States has recorded the most deaths with 176,371, followed by Brazil with 114,250, Mexico with 60,254, India with 56,706 and Britain with 41,423 fatalities.
The global death toll from the new coronavirus continued to rise, with numerous countries ramping up restrictions in an effort to battle an eruption of new cases.
Western Europe, particularly Spain, Italy Germany and France, has been hit with infection levels not seen in many months, sparking fears of a fully-fledged second wave.
And in Asia, South Korea became the latest country to announce it would boost restrictions to try to stem a new outbreak, after largely bringing the virus under control.
Across the world, the number of deaths has doubled to just over 800,000 since June 6, with 100,000 fatalities in the last 17 days alone, while more than 23 million cases have been reported.
Latin America is the region the most affected, while more than half the global fatalities have been reported in the hardest-hit United States, Brazil, Mexico and India.
The surging numbers come after the UN health agency said Friday that the world should be able to rein in the pandemic in less than two years.
World Health Organiza-tion chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus sought to draw favourable comparisons with the flu pandemic of 1918 which cost the lives of as many as 50 million people.
Another report adds: A Chinese health official Saturday confirmed the country authorized emergency usage of COVID-19 vaccines developed by some select domestic companies on July 22.
"We've drawn up a series of plan packages, including medical consent forms, side-effects monitoring plans, rescuing plans, compensation plans, to make sure the emergency use is well regulated and monitored," Zheng Zhongwei, head of China's coronavirus vaccine development task force told CCTV.
An emergency use authorization, which is based on Chinese vaccine management law, allows unapproved vaccine candidates to be used among people who are at high risk of getting infected on a limited period
By first inoculating the special groups, like frontline medical workers and civil servants, the move is to ensure that a city can keep normal functions when a health crisis strikes, the law stated.
Similar authorizations have been legalized in many countries. For example, U.S. Food and Drug Administration allows unapproved medical products to be used in an emergency to diagnose, treat or prevent life-threatening disease or conditions.
The national agency has used several emergency use authorizations since the coronavirus outbreak as a way to get many diagnostic tests more quickly to the market than the normal procedures.
"We are planning to scale up the inoculating group to better prepare for a possible next wave in autumn and winter," Zheng added.
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