WORLD – According to data released by the Union Health and Family Welfare Ministry, India is witnessing a slight dip in daily reported cases with the last figures standing at 48,698 new cases and 1183 deaths bring a tally of 30,183,143 reported cases.

The weekly positivity rate which has been less than 5% for the past 19 days currently has declined to 2.97% as the number of active cases has further declined to 595,565 and now accounts for 1.97 per cent of the total infections with the death toll now at 394,493.

Recoveries outnumbered daily new cases of COVID-19 for the 44th consecutive day with the number of people who have recuperated from the disease surging to 29,193,085.

India administered 61.19 million vaccine doses in a single day taking the cumulative number of jabs given so far under the nationwide inoculation drive to 315 million, according to immunization data published recently.

In Australia, Sydney and some surrounding areas will enter a hard two-week COVID-19 lockdown on Saturday as authorities struggle to control a fast-spreading outbreak of the highly infectious Delta variant that has grown to 80 cases.

Parts of Sydney, Australia’s biggest city, were already under lockdown due to the outbreak, but health authorities said cases and exposure sites were increasing too rapidly.

Though it has been confronted with small outbreaks, Australia has been more successful in managing the pandemic than many other advanced economies through swift border closures, social distancing rules and high compliance, reporting just over 30,400 cases and 910 COVID-19 deaths.

The nation is also at the moment administering free Pfizer vaccines to high risk worker above the age of 40 and Astrazeneca to those above the age of 60.

In Taiwan, authorities reported its first local transmission case of the Delta variant hence tightening controls in the southern part of the island where the cases have occurred.

It reported 129 new locally transmitted COVID-19 infections and six deaths on Thursday, bringing the total number to 14,398 cases and 605 deaths.

The Island nation is set receive a million doses of the vaccine from Japan under the COVAX program by the World Health Organization (WHO).

Globally reported cases stand at 180,411,681 and the death toll at 3,909,012, with 165,803,382 recoveries.

At the same time, more than 2.8 billion vaccine doses have been issued with 806 million people being fully vaccinated which stands for 10.3% of the total population.