Coronavirus Daily Update: COVID-19 cases explained in charts

India reported over 20,000 new COVID-19 cases according to the official update on January 7. Active cases in the country increased after 40 days. However, the number of recoveries crossed the 1 crore-mark.

Chaitanya Mallapur

January 07, 2021 / 11:40 IST

Representative image

As many as 20,346 new COVID-19 cases were reported on January 7, taking India's overall tally above 1.03 crore, according to the health ministry’s latest update.

India reported 222 more deaths (below the 300 mark for 13th day in a row) and 19,587 recoveries in the previous 24 hours, the latest release showed. Active cases increased after 40 days to 2,28,083 with a rise of 537 cases in a day.

Kerala reported the most (6,394 or 31 percent) new cases in the last 24 hours, followed by Maharashtra (4,382), Chhattisgarh (1,050), West Bengal (868) and Tamil Nadu (811). These five states accounted for 66 percent of all the new cases reported in India.

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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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