July 3, 2020: India witnessed a spike of 29,903 new COVID-19 positive cases on Friday.

The country's COVID-19 tally touched 6,27,168 with the highest single-day increase of 20,903 cases, while the death count rose to 18,213, the latest data from the Union Health Ministry shows.

The Drug Controller General of India has approved pharmaceutical firm Zydus Cadila to start Phase I and Phase II human clinical trials of its COVID-19 vaccine. This is the second vaccine after Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech's COVAXIN to get the approval. Drug manufacturers around the world are racing to develop a vaccine against the novel coronavirus; a novel virus is one that has never previously been identified in humans, making the task of creating a vaccine that much harder.

Maharastra has recorded over 6,000 positive cases in the last 24 hours for the first time since worldwide coronavirus outbreak. Now the state has been the worst hit by the coronavirus pandemic and the new 6330 cases taking the total count to over 1.86 lakh.