Wastage of Covaxin down to 4% from 17% in March and Covishield from 8% to 1%: Govt

It also said the Covid-19 positivity rate has declined from 24.83 per cent on May 10 to 12.45 per cent on May 22.

Addressing a press briefing, Niti Aayog member (health) VK Paul said that though there has been an overall decline in case burden, the positivity rate is still over 10 per cent in 382 districts.

The Covid-19 situation is stabilising with positivity rate, daily cases and active cases reducing, Paul said.

Eight states have more than 1 lakh active cases while 18 states have over 15 per cent positivity rate, joint secretary in the health ministry Lav Agarwal said during the briefing.

Paul also said that children can spread the coronavirus but they almost always have mild infection and mortality is very very low in them.

On the vaccine passport issue, Agarwal said there has been no consensus yet on the matter at the World Health Organisation level, but discussions are going on.

The daily rise in coronavirus cases in India remained below the 3 lakh-mark for the sixth consecutive day, with 2.57 lakh new cases recorded in a single day, health ministry data showed.

With the fresh cases, India’s tally of COVID-19 cases climbed to 2,62,89,290. The death toll due to the disease rose to 2,95,525 with 4,194 fresh fatalities, the data updated at 8 am showed. The active cases further reduced to 29,23,400 comprising 11.12 per cent of the total infections, while the national COVID-19 recovery rate improved to 87.76 per cent.