India reports under 3,000 new COVID-19 cases fourth day in a row

Only Andaman and Nicobar Islands, apart from Uttarakhand, reported a nominal rise in active coronavirus caseload in the 24 hours.

Sumi Sukanya Dutta

March 17, 2022 / 09:53 IST

Omicron | Representative image

India has reported 2,539 new COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours, down 12 percent compared to infections reported on the previous day. This is the fourth day in a row that new cases have stayed below 5,000. The fresh tally takes the total number of confirmed coronavirus infections in the country to 4,30,01,477.

A total of 60 new deaths due to the infectious disease were also recorded, raising the number of COVID-19 fatalities to 5,16,132. Of these new deaths, 38 were backlog deaths reported by Kerala as part of its data reconciliation exercise.

Kerala, at 12, also reported the highest coronavirus related deaths in the last 24 hours, followed by Maharashtra, Karnataka and West Bengal which registered 2 fatalities each in a day. Majority of the states and UTs, however, did not report any COVID-19 deaths during the period.

The country’s active caseload has now fallen to 30, 799, down 2,012 from the previous day and active cases constitute 0.07 percent of the total confirmed cases. Kerala, at 8,359, has the highest active COVID-19 caseload 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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