Worldwide cases cross 35.78m

More than 35.78 million people have been reported to be infected by the novel coronavirus globally and 1,049,860 have died, according to Worldometers tally, report agencies.

Infections have been reported in more than 213 countries and territories since the first cases were identified in China in December 2019.

India's total coronavirus cases rose by 61,267 in the last 24 hours to 6.69 million on Tuesday morning, data from the health ministry showed.

Deaths from COVID-19 infections rose by 884 to 103,569, the ministry said.

News from Geneva adds: A vaccine against COVID-19 may be ready by year-end, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday, without elaborating.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, addressing the end of a two-day meeting of its Executive Board on the pandemic, said: "We will need vaccines and there is hope that by the end of this year we may have a vaccine. There is hope."

Nine experimental vaccines are in the pipeline of the WHO-led COVAX global vaccine facility that aims to distribute 2 billion doses by the end of 2021.

Meanwhile, GlaxoSmith-Kline and partner Vir Biotechnology will expand their trial of an experimental antibody to treat Covid-19 after initial use by a group of volunteers did not raise any safety concerns.

The two partners in August started testing the antibody on early-stage COVID-19 patients, hoping to keep symptoms from progressing.

Various firms are running tests in this promising class of antiviral drugs to combat the pandemic.

After testing the drug on 20 US participants for safety, the trial will now expand as planned to 1,300 patients globally.

Meanwhile, US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Monday said COVID-19 can spread through virus lingering in the air, sometimes for hours, acknowledging concerns widely voiced by public health experts about airborne transmission of the virus.

Another report from Singapore adds: China is in talks to have its locally-produced COVID-19 vaccines assessed by the World Health Organization, as a step toward making them available for international use, a WHO official said on Tuesday.