”The (third) wave may occur either due to mutations in the virus or due to the available pool of susceptible population, which in turn is also dependent on various pharmaceutical and non-pharmaceutical interventions for management of the pandemic,” Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya said.

To a question on when the World Health Organisation (WHO) is expected to recognise Covaxin vaccine, he said its producer Bharat Biotech Limited has submitted the request along with all necessary documentation to the global body earlier this month.

Bagchi also said that more than half of the member states of the European Union have recognised Covishield, the vaccine manufactured by Pune-based Serum Institute of India.

”The scheme, the prime minister has announced, provides support for education and health and will create a corpus of Rs 10 lakh for each child when he or she reaches 18 years of age. This corpus will be used to give a monthly financial support/ stipend form 18 years of age, for the next five years to take care of his or her personal requirements during the period of higher education and on reaching the age of 23 years, he or she will get the corpus amount as one lump-sum for personal and professional use,” Irani said.

“The reports assume that all the excess mortality figures are COVID deaths, which is not based on facts and totally fallacious. Excess mortality is a term used to describe an all-cause mortality figure and attributing these deaths to COVID-19 is completely misleading,” it said.