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Decline in daily new Covid-19 cases continues, with the lowest number, 1.86 lakh, since April 14 recorded yesterday. 24 states have reported a decline in surge. Daily positivity rate too has dipped to 9%. The number of deaths remained under 4,000. Over 29 lakh vaccine doses were administered in the last 24 hours, according to health ministry data. The Centre has said that states/UTs still have a total stock of 1.84 crore vaccine doses to administer, and more will be sent over the next three days. Stay here for all live updates.
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BENGALURU: The existing Covid-19 vaccines are effective for a minimum one year as per the available evidence and if more troubling variants don’t emerge, the protection may last for a couple of years, virologist Dr V Ravi said on Saturday. He is a member of the state Covid task force committee.
“Vaccinated persons would get protection for two to three years if there are no further variants of concern after one year,” he said during a webinar, ‘Covid – 3rd Wave, Vaccination and Protection’, organised by the Karnataka Women Journalists’ Association.
Further research is required to determine the exact duration of vaccines’ effectiveness. Dr Ravi believes regular processing of a portion of Covid positive swab samples for genetic sequencing will help identify new coronavirus variants. The double mutant variants’ B. 1.617.1’ and ‘B.1.617.2’ have been found in 26 per cent of the 933 samples processed for genomic seque