India logged 7,447 new coronavirus infections taking the total tally of COVID-19 cases to 3,47,26,049, while the active cases declined to 86,415, according to the Union Health Ministry data updated on Friday.

The death toll climbed to 4,76,869 with 391 fresh fatalities, according to the data updated at 8 am.

A one-and-a-half-year-old girl, who had fallen into a borewell in Doni village of Madhya Pradesh's Chhatarpur district, was rescued in the wee hours of Friday, in an operation that lasted nearly 10 hours, a senior official said.

The girl, Divyanshi, had slipped into the borewell around 3 pm on Thursday and was rescued at 12.47 am on Friday, the official said.

Shares of Kopran were locked at the 5 per cent upper circuit for a second straight day, at Rs 318.95 on the BSE in Friday’s trade, in an otherwise weak market.

The stock of the pharmaceutical company was trading at its highest level since 1994. It had hit a record high of Rs 559 on December 5, 1994, data shows. In the past 21 months, the market price of Kopran has zoomed 1,874 per cent from a level of Rs 20.50 hit on March 17, 2020.

Shares of Bajaj Electricals hit a two-month high of Rs 1,329.75, ralling 6 per cent on the BSE in Friday's intra-day trade, in an otherwise weak market. The stock of the household appliances companies has surged 26 per cent in the past six trading days, after the company said it will review its existing corporate structure due to the nature and potential opportunities of each of its business segments.

The stock was quoting at its highest level since October 4, 2021. It had hit a 52-week high of Rs 1,588.55 on September 17, 2021. At 01:34 pm, Bajaj Electricals was trading 4 per cent higher at Rs 1,307, as compared to a per cent decline in the S&P BSE Sensex.

Bharti Airtel on Friday said that it has paid Rs 15,519 crore to the Department of Telecom towards pre-payment of the entire deferred liabilities pertaining to spectrum acquired in auction of year 2014. The company had acquired 128.4 MHz spectrum (including Telenor spectrum) for a consideration of Rs 19,051 crore in the 2014 auction.

These liabilities were due in annual instalments from FY 2026-2027 to 2031-2032 and carried an interest rate of 10% (the highest rate amongst the deferred liabilities and borrowings) and an average residual life of seven-plus years.

RateGain Travel Technologies (RTTL) has made a weak stock market debut, with its shares listed at Rs 360, a 15 per cent discount to its issue price of Rs 425 per share on the National Stock Exchange (NSE). The stock opened at Rs 364.80, a 14 per cent lower from its issue price on the BSE.

At 10:02 am; the stock was traded at Rs 372, a 12 per cent discount when compared to its issue price. The stock so far had hit a high of Rs 375.05 and a low of Rs 342.30 in intra-day trade on the BSE.

Shares of information technologies (IT) companies were in demand with Nifty IT index gaining over a per cent in an otherwise weak market after Accenture reported strong results for the quarter ended November (Q1FY22) and also gave a strong FY22 outlook. Accenture follows July to August as financial year.

At 09:41 am; Nifty IT index, the sole gainer from the sectoral indices, was up 1.5 per cent, as compared to 0.63 per cent decline in the Nifty50 index.

While Jio has consistently added new subscribers (net addition) every year since its launch, Airtel has been able to contain porting out with porting in and new subscribers as they take up smartphones.

Vodafone lost out, not so much in the immediate years after Jio’s entry, as much after the pandemic. In fact, Airtel and Jio added a similar number of net new customers from September 2020 to September 2021, eating into the subscriber base of Vi with nearly equal force.

Software major Infosys, which has drawn flak for glitches in the new income tax portal, has set up a dedicated war room to monitor the performance of the portal as the extended deadline of December 31 for filing income tax returns for FY21 approaches.

As of December 15, 35.9 million income tax returns (ITR) have been filed on the new e-filing portal with the daily filings crossing 600,000 per day.

The Omicron variant of coronavirus infects and multiplies 70 times faster than Delta and the original COVID-19 strain, but the severity of illness is likely to be much lower, according to a study.

The yet-to-be peer-reviewed study provides the first information on how the novel variant of concern infects human respiratory tract.

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