Delhi High Court refuses to reduce gap between Covishield vaccines

New Delhi: The Delhi High Court on Thursday refused to entertain a plea seeking reduction of the 12-16 week interval for the second dose of Covishield vaccine to eight weeks for persons over 50 years of age and those having comorbidities.

"We are not inclined to issue notice. We will dismiss with costs," said a bench of Chief Justice DN Patel and Justice Jyoti Singh on a PIL by Dr Siddharth De. "Are you aware of any procedure? How are doses fixed? Who is fixing the doses? We will have to alter the procedure if at all we have the power to do so," the court questioned the counsel for De, advocate Kuldeep Jauhari.

India recorded 41,806 new coronavirus cases, taking the infection tally to 3,09,87,880, while the active cases increased to 4,32,041, according to the Union Health Ministry data updated on Thursday. The death toll climbed to 4,11,989 with 581 fresh fatalities. An increase of 2,095 cases has been recorded in the active caseload in a span of 24 hours.

Pfizer, Johnson and Johnson yet to apply for license of COVID-19 vaccines in India.

Twenty children hailing from Puducherry were hospitalised on Thursday after testing positive, Director of Health and Family Welfare services S Mohan Kumar said.

Uttarakhand CM Pushkar Singh Dhami said there will be no Kanwar Yatra in the state. "Keeping the lives of everyone on priority, we have cancelled the Kanwar Yatra. Protection of people's lives comes first for us.

"We have stopped it in our state," says the CM on UP Govt's decision to allow the Yatra.

Dr Devi Shetty, Chairman of Covid expert committee, Karnataka said it is difficult to say when the third wave of COVID-19 will come and how severe it will be. Dr Shetty said that our government, people, hospitals and doctors are much prepared as compared to the past.