Coronavirus Daily Update: COVID-19 cases explained in charts

India reported less than 23,000 COVID-19 new cases according to the official update, on December 15, lowest in the last 166 days since July 2. Active cases in India continue to slide further below the 3.5 lakh mark, with a fall of over 12,700 cases in a day. Recoveries above 94 lakh with a recovery rate of 95.1 percent.

Chaitanya Mallapur

December 15, 2020 / 10:48 IST

Source: Reuters

As many as 22,065 new cases of novel coronavirus were reported, with India’s total COVID-19 cases above 99 lakh, as per health ministry’s December 15 update.

India reported 354 new deaths (below the 500 mark for the 10th day) and 30,695 recoveries in the last 24 hours, the latest release shows. Active cases continue to drop, to 3,39,820 with a fall of 12,766 cases in a day.

Maharashtra reported the most (2,949) new cases in the last 24 hours, followed by Kerala (2,707), West Bengal (1,834), Chhattisgarh (1,615) and Delhi (1,376). These top five states account for nearly 48 percent of all the new cases in India. No state/union territory reported more than 3,000 new cases for the first time in the last six months.

covid-19-update-Dec15

Both Delhi and Maharashtra reported the most (60) deaths each, followed by West Bengal (43), Kerala (24) and Punjab (21). These five states account for 59 percent of all the new deaths reported across the country.

COVID-19 Vaccine

Frequently Asked Questions

How does a vaccine work?

A vaccine works by mimicking a natural infection. A vaccine not only induces immune response to protect people from any future COVID-19 infection, but also helps quickly build herd immunity to put an end to the pandemic. Herd immunity occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. The good news is that SARS-CoV-2 virus has been fairly stable, which increases the viability of a vaccine.

How many types of vaccines are there?

There are broadly four types of vaccine — one, a vaccine based on the whole virus (this could be either inactivated, or an attenuated [weakened] virus vaccine); two, a non-replicating viral vector vaccine that uses a benign virus as vector that carries the antigen of SARS-CoV; three, nucleic-acid vaccines that have genetic material like DNA and RNA of antigens like spike protein given to a person, helping human cells decode genetic material and produce the vaccine; and four, protein subunit vaccine wherein the recombinant proteins of SARS-COV-2 along with an adjuvant (booster) is given as a vaccine.

What does it take to develop a vaccine of this kind?

Vaccine development is a long, complex process. Unlike drugs that are given to people with a diseased, vaccines are given to healthy people and also vulnerable sections such as children, pregnant women and the elderly. So rigorous tests are compulsory. History says that the fastest time it took to develop a vaccine is five years, but it usually takes double or sometimes triple that time.

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