Even as the world is slowly starting to recover from the impact caused due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, the total confirmed cases of coronavirus across the globe have surpassed 100 million.

According to Johns Hopkins University, the official global death toll from the coronavirus pandemic crossed 2 million on January 15. Speaking about it, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, "A year ago today, fewer than 1,500 cases of Covid-19 had been reported to WHO, including just 23 cases outside China. This week, we expect to reach 100 million reported cases. Numbers can make us numb to what they represent: every death is someone's parent, someone's partner, someone's child, someone's friend." Tedros also expressed his hope of vaccinating all healthcare workers, frontline workers and elderly people within the first hundred days of 2021. "Vaccine nationalism might serve short-term political goals. But it's in every nation's own medium and long-term economic interest to support vaccine equity," he added.

The Covid-19 vaccination drive was launched in India by PM Modi on January 16. The Union health ministry had earlier announced that doctors, community health workers and police officials will be prioritized for the vaccine. Following healthcare workers and frontline workers, priority will be given to those above 50 years of age and those below 50 years of age with co-morbidities. On January 3, two vaccines - Bharat Biotech's Covaxin and Oxford-AstraZeneca's Covishield manufactured by Serum Institute of India - were approved by India for 'restricted emergency use.'

Covid-19 has claimed the lives of more than 2,218,541 people and infected over 102,735,204 people across the world. The virus was first identified in Wuhan, Hubei Province, in China. As the death toll and overall cases began rising rapidly across the world, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a global health emergency and the outbreak was labelled a pandemic. As on January 29, India has recorded 10,740,309 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 154,202 deaths.