The much-awaited day is here. The vaccination drive against coronavirus will kickstart in India from January 16. The announcement was on Saturday made by the Union Ministry of Health.

A meeting chaired by Narendra Modi was today held to take the decision. As is known, 30 crore people will be vaccinated in the first phase, which ends in July. Three crore healthcare and frontline workers will get priority access. Those above the age of 50 and those below 50 years of age and suffering from co-morbidities will get access next.

Meanwhile, the third countrywide Dry Run was held today and it was massive. It covered 4,895 session sites spread across 615 districts.

The country's active caseload as of today stands at 2,24,190. It is 2.15% of India’s total positive cases. Total recovered cases are at 10,056,651. India logged 19,253 new recoveries in the last 24 hours. "About 78.89% of the new recovered cases is contributed by 10 States/UTs. As many as 18,222 cases were registered in the last 24 hours. Ten States/UTs have contributed 79.83% of the new cases," the government data said.