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New Delhi: While 1,70,841 COVID patients across the country are on ventilator, as many as 9,02,291 patients are on oxygen support, Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said on Saturday. In his virtual address at the 25th meeting of the Group of Ministers (GoM) to discuss the pandemic situation, the minister said that 1.34 percent of COVID caseload was in ICU, 0.39 percent of cases were on ventilators and 3.70 percent COVID patients were on oxygen support.

The Supreme Court has set up a national task force that will ensure streamlining of oxygen distribution as Covid-19 crisis in the country has caused massive shortage of oxygen in hospitals. Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Karnataka are some of the states that have been ravaged by oxygen shortage.

Days after its warning that the third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic is "inevitable", the Union Health Ministry on Friday clarified its statement and said that it can be avoided if appropriate norms are followed.

"If we take strong measures, the third wave may not happen in all the places or indeed anywhere at all. It depends much on how effectively the guidance is implemented at the local level, in the states, in districts and in the cities everywhere," Principal Scientific Advisor to Centre K Vijay Raghavan said, as reported by a news agency.

Raghavan had on Wednesday warned that a 'third wave of COVID-19 is inevitable' as the new variants of the infection are more transmissible, adding that vaccines need to be constantly updated to tackle them.

Russian developers of the Sputnik V vaccine on Thursday said that their single-dose Sputnik Light vaccine demonstrated 79.4 per cent efficacy against the COVID-19 and it has proven effective against all new strains of coronavirus.

Sputnik Light is the first component (recombinant human adenovirus serotype number 26 (rAd26)) of the Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine, according to the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), the sovereign wealth fund marketing the vaccine abroad.

"The single-dose Sputnik Light vaccine demonstrated 79.4 percent efficacy according to analyzed data taken from 28 days after the injection was administered. An efficacy level of near 80 percent is higher than that of many two-dose vaccines," the RDIF said in a statement.

K VijayRaghavan, principal scientific advisor to the government, on Wednesday warned that a third wave of the coronavirus pandemic was inevitable. He said that vaccines have to be “updated” to deal with new strains of the virus, along with further surveillance.

At a press conference, VijayRaghavan spoke about the future of the coronavirus crisis.    

“A phase three is inevitable, given the higher levels of circulating virus,” he said. “But it is not clear on what time scale this phase three will occur. Hopefully, incrementally, but we should prepare for new waves. Previous infections and vaccines will cause adaptive pressure on the virus for new kinds of changes which try to escape. We should be prepared scientifically to take care of that.”

Despite Covid-19 vaccines now being open to all adults in India, the vaccination numbers have not picked up nationwide, with the average number of daily doses falling to 13.61 lakh in the past three days.

Data further showed that the number of people delaying getting their second shot may be in several lakhs.

India’s vaccination programme, that first began on 16 January, opened up to all age groups above 18 years on 1 May. However, despite this third phase in the programme making more individuals eligible for the vaccine, the number of those vaccinated has not picked up.