Modi's US visit: The question asked is Covaxin allowed in US

This is why Covaxin is trending on Twitter. The US does not recognise Covaxin jabs and treats the recipients as unvaccinated.

However, PM Narendra Modi, who got jabbed with the India-made Bharat Biotech's Covaxin is right now on a flight headed to the US.

The question social media is therefore asking is: Which vaccine did he really take?

Filmmaker Nikhil Alva is among those asking this question: "Like our PM, I too got jabbed with our Atamnirbhar Covaxin. Now other than Iran & Nepal and a handful more, I can't travel anywhere in the world. Which is why I'm perplexed to hear that our PM is off to the USA, that doesn't recognise Covaxin. So which vaccine did he really take?"

As does author Anand Ranganathan who tweets, "The USA has still not approved our Covaxin through either its FDA or CDC, and neither has the WHO. Does this mean that PM @narendramodi vaccinated with Covaxin, will be quarantined for 2 weeks upon his arrival tonight in the USA? He should be. He should suffer like all Indians."

And another tweet from @The Godfather: PM Modi had taken Covaxin which is not recognized by US till now. Now he is going to US . Is US going to treat him as "unvaccinated"? Are they going to make an exception in his case? Are there separate rules in US for PM and other civilians?

Meanwhile, the Delta Covid variant is the current dominant strain of the infectious virus, with its presence reported in 185 countries, as of September 21, the World Health organisation has said.

"The Delta variant now accounted for 90 per cent of the sequences submitted to GISAID with a sample collection date (between 15 June-15 September, 2021)," the global health agency said in its weekly epidemiological update on Tuesday. GISAID, which stands for Global Initiative on Sharing Avian Influenza Data, is an open-access database.

"Less than one per cent each of Alpha, Beta and Gamma are currently circulating. It's really predominantly Delta around the world," Maria Van Kerkhove, the World Health Organisation's technical lead on Covid-19, was quoted as saying during a WHO social media live interaction.

Delta "has become more fit, it is more transmissible and it is out-competing, it is replacing the other viruses that are circulating," she added.

India logged 26,964 new coronavirus infections taking the total tally of COVID-19 cases to 3,35,31,498, while the active cases declined to 3,01,989, the lowest in 186 days, according to the Union Health Ministry data updated on Wednesday. The death toll climbed to 4,45,768 with 383 fresh fatalities, according to the data updated at 8 am. The active cases comprise 0.90 per cent of the total infections, the lowest since March 2020, while the national COVID-19 recovery rate was recorded at 97.77 per cent, the highest since March 2020, the ministry said.

A reduction of 7,586 cases has been recorded in the active COVID-19 caseload in a span of 24 hours. As many as 15,92,395 tests were conducted on Tuesday taking the total cumulative tests conducted so far for detection of COVID-19 in the country to 55,67,54,282.

The daily positivity rate was recorded at 1.69 per cent. It has been less than three per cent for last 23 days. The weekly positivity rate was recorded at 2.08 per cent. It has been below three per cent for the last 89 days, according to the ministry.