# Covaxin efficacy

• Hyderabad based Bharat biotech India limited on saturday publicised the long awaited results of the phase-3 trial of covaxin.

• The phase-3 trial of covaxin involved nearly 25,800 volunteers spanning 25 hospitals across the country.

• The company said the vaccine had an overall efficacy of 77.8% against symptomatic covid-19.

• This is higher than the 70.4% efficacy reported from the phase-3 trial results of the Astrazeneca covishield vaccine.

# Covid-19 excess deaths

• The number of “excess deaths” registered by the civil registration system (CRS) in Rajasthan ever since the covid-19 pandemic hit was 45,088, which is 5.4 times the official reported figure of 8385 deaths for the same period.

• The undercount factor (5.4) and excess deaths for Rajasthan (45,088) were lower than those for Madhya pradesh (23.8) in the same period.

# Twitter

• Twitter has told the Delhi high court that it is in the “final stages” of appointing an interim chief compliance officer and an interim resident grievance officer under the new Information technology rules.

• The micro-blogging site is also trying to get the definition of a ” significant social media intermediary” under the IT (intermediary guidelines and digital ethics code) rules, 2021.

# Afghanistan

• Hundreds of Taliban fighters were killed in fierce battles with government forces across several provinces of Afghanistan.

• Washington announced  it would finish withdrawing its troops from the country by the end of August.

• The exit of foreign troops from Bagram has further fuelled concerns that country might slide into new civil war, as in the 1990s after the soviets left.

# Organisation of petroleum exporting countries +

• OPEC + will resume talks on monday after failing to reach a deal on oil output policy for a second day running on friday because the united arab emirates blocked some aspects of the pact.

• The rise in oil prices is contributing to global inflation, slowing the economic recovery from the novel coronavirus.