国际英语新闻:India's COVID-19 tally surpasses 6 million, vaccine expected early next year

NEW DELHI, Sept. 28 (Xinhua) -- India's COVID-19 tally is steeply rising, surpassing 6 million on Monday, while the country's Health Minister Harsh Vardhan pinned hopes on the development of the first vaccine by early next year.

"Research to develop a vaccine is being done expeditiously. There are at least three viable such vaccine candidates that are in the phase of clinical trials right now in the country. We're hopeful that within first quarter of 2021 it will be available," media reports quoted Vardhan as saying.

The country's COVID-19 tally reached 6,074,702, and the death toll reached 95,542, said the latest data released by the federal health ministry.

As many as 82,170 new cases and 1,039 deaths were registered in the past 24 hours across the country.

Still there are 962,640 active cases in the country, while 5,016,520 people have been cured and discharged from hospitals.

According to the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), a total of 71,967,230 COVID-19 tests were conducted in the country till Sunday, out of which 709,394 were conducted on Sunday alone.

During the day the health minister also launched a vaccine portal, and another portal on COVID Clinical Registry, said an official statement.

"The portal provides useful and important information related to vaccine development, ongoing clinical trials and progress made in this area locally and globally at regular intervals," said the minister.

Meanwhile, Vardhan said India's continuously rising recovery rate and progressively falling case fatality rate have proven the success of the COVID-19 containment strategy, adding the country has ramped up the testing capacity which has touched 1.5 million daily tests.

The number of recovered COVID-19 cases in the country has been higher than the number of fresh cases registered over the past 10 consecutive days, an official confirmed.

The gap between percentage of recovered cases and the percentage of active cases is continuously increasing. The gap between the recovered cases and active cases is well above 4 million.

The number of active patients has been below 1 million for several days, according to federal health ministry.