In a significant development, two medical oxygen plants funded by PMCARES have been installed at AIIMS, New Delhi and RML Hospital within a week. Carried out on a war footing, the two plants were swiftly airlifted from Coimbatore and installed yesterday. Both the plants will start supply of oxygen by today evening.

In order to effectively address the high surge of Covid-19 cases in the country, PMCARES has allocated funds for the installation of 500 Medical Oxygen Plants across the country. These plants are planned to be set up within 3 months. In all, five high flow medical oxygen plants will be installed at AIIMS Trauma Centre, Dr Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital (RML), Safdarjung Hospital, Lady Hardinge Medical College, and AIIMS, Jhajjar, Haryana. 

Meanwhile, the cumulative number of COVID19 vaccine doses administered in the country has crossed16 Crore  today as the Phase-3 of the nationwide Vaccination Drive expands further. India took only 109 days to achieve this milestone. In comparison, the US took 111 days while China required 116 days to achieve similar figures. 6,71,285 beneficiaries of the age group 18-44 years received their first dose of COVID vaccine across 12 States. These states are Chhattisgarh (1,026), Delhi (82,000), Gujarat (1,61,625), Jammu and Kashmir (10,885), Haryana (99,680), Karnataka (3,840), Maharashtra (1,11,621), Odisha (13,768), Punjab (908), Rajasthan (1,30,071), Tamil Nadu (4,577) and UP (51,284).

Cumulatively, 16,04,94,188 vaccine doses have been administered through 23,66,349 sessions, as per the provisional report till 7 am today. These include 94,62,505 HCWs who have taken the 1st dose and 63,22,055 HCWs who have taken the 2nd dose, 1,35,65,728 FLWs (1stdose), 73,32,999 FLWs (2nddose), 6,71,285 beneficiaries under 18-45 age group (1st dose), 5,29,50,584 1st dose beneficiaries and 1,23,85,466 2nd dose beneficiaries more than 60 years old and 5,33,94,353 (1st dose) and 44,09,213 (2nd dose) beneficiaries aged 45 to 60 years.

India’s cumulative recoveries stand at 1,69,51,731 today. The National Recovery Rate is 82.03%. 3,38,439 recoveries were registered in the last 24 hours. Ten states account for 73.4% of the new recoveries.

Nineteen States/UTs have a weekly positivity rate higher than the national average. 3,82,315 new cases were registered in the last 24 hours. Ten States including Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Karnataka,Kerala,Haryana, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan report 70.91% of the new cases. Maharashtra has reported the highest daily new cases at 51,880. It is followed by Karnataka with 44,631 while Kerala reported 37,190 new cases. India’s total Active Caseload has reached 34,87,229. It now comprises 16.87% of the country's total Positive Cases. A net incline of 40,096 cases recorded from the total active caseload in the last 24 hours.