In a letter to states and union territories, Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan has suggested setting up of a state steering committee chaired by the chief secretary, a state task force led by additional Chief Secretary or principal secretary (health), and a district task force to be headed by the district magistrate.
Dharavi's success underlines the importance of community participation in any public health crisis.
The Asian Development Bank has approved a US$ 1.5 billion (around Rs 11,185 crore) loan to India for COVID-19 vaccine procurement.
The two cities finally got their act together by ramping up the testing capacity and implementing stricter quarantine norms.
"The unfair and discriminatory" rules have drawn sharp criticism from the Indian Olympic Association, which has written to the Games' organising committee requesting it to ensure that mechanisms to prevent COVID-19 do not have any "adverse and detrimental impact" on performance of athletes.
Twelve months on and things have not got any easier for Tennis Australia with Omicron spreading through the country just as the first players are set to arrive for warm-up events ahead of the Melbourne Park tournament.
'The government should immediately enact an Act to make caste discrimination a criminal offence and lay down a procedure similar to that of the Anti-Ragging Act.' 'Ragging has nearly been eliminated because it is treated as a criminal offence.' 'Similar procedure should be used in case of caste discrimination.'
Drishti, an affordable eye care chain has lit up the lives of scores of people in rural areas.
Mental health coach Anu Krishna offers advice on how parents and students can overcome the stress caused by online education.
'By the time actual action began, it was already too late.' 'The virus was raging.'
Stressing that the Covid virus may continue to transmit for a "very long time", senior WHO official Poonam Khetrapal Singh says the level of immunity in a community, through vaccination and previous infection, will determine whether it will become endemic in the long run.
'Since the Covid virus has a tendency to mutate, we can continue to expect new variants of the virus to emerge and keep circulating and recirculating in the communities.'
'What the government should do is to use the vaccine judiciously, not just to prevent a third wave alone, but to stop the number of deaths happening in the interim.'
The WHO has countries to enhance surveillance and sequencing efforts to better understand circulating SARS-CoV-2 variants, submit complete genome sequences and associated metadata to a publicly available database.
rediffGURU Anu Krishna, a mental health coach and NLP practitioner, offers expert advice on how to take charge of your life.
The research on 1,276 patients from Wuhan, China, shows that around one in three people still experienced shortness of breath after 12 months, while lung impairments persisted in some patients, especially those who had experienced the most severe illness with Covid-19.
'We behaved as if this disease is not a problem for India.' 'We acted as if it would go away. But it didn't go away; it exploded.'
The political war of words over Manipur intensified on Saturday with the BJP raising the incidents of atrocities against women in West Bengal and Rajasthan and questioning the 'silence' of the opposition, which termed it as a diversionary tactic to avoid debate on the situation in the north-eastern state.
'The prime minister is talking to his Chachaji and he is crying in the PM's lap, it was such an emotional scene.'
The gunman entered the Greenwood Park Mall with a rifle and several magazines of ammunition and began firing in the food court.
The reason is that because of the hybrid immunity after three waves of natural infection and a large proportion of adults receiving both doses of COVID-19 vaccine, the susceptible pool has come down drastically, Lahariya said.
As the COVID wave gradually shifts to rural areas, several states are gearing up to check its spread through self-proclaimed lockdowns by Panchayati Raj institutions, creating a database of migrants and providing free online medical consultation to the sick.
The government's focus is on urban areas, so rural areas are neglected and the COVID situation in Bihar's villages -- neither the positive cases nor the deaths -- are reported, notes M I Khan.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday met prominent US personalities from different walks of life, including Tesla CEO Elon Musk who asserted that India has more promise than any other large country and that he is incredibly excited about its future.
Iconic composer Ilaiyaraaja, celebrated athlete PT Usha, philanthropist Veerendra Heggade and screenwriter V Vijayendra Prasad Garu were nominated to Rajya Sabha on Wednesday.
From offering office premises that can be converted into isolation wards to earmarking funds to be used for procuring kits, ventilators as well as personal protective equipment for health care workers, India Inc has put a united front to combat the unprecedented crisis facing the country.
Less than 30,000 booster doses daily in December.
The private college and hospital has been in the thick of controversy following irregularities and fraud, raising questions on why the Chhattisgarh government wants to acquire the debt-ridden institution by paying double the amount of its valuation.
Spain's Paula Badosa, the women's world number 67, was the only player to contract the coronavirus. She was released from hotel quarantine on Wednesday.
The coming year will be one that will test sabka vishwas to the utmost, predicts Aditi Phadnis.
The Congress needs to reorganise itself at the grassroots, infuse younger blood, and have more boots on the ground. Just offering freebies is not the answer anymore. Leadership matters, asserts Ramesh Menon.
Naqvi expressed confidence that Muslims will abide by lockdown guidelines during the holy month of Ramzan.
'The roadmap ahead seems very difficult especially in the rural areas where there is very poor infrastructure, vaccine reach and hesitancy.' 'These are a deadly cocktail for the next wave.'
Within 12 to 24 hours of stopping smoking, carbon monoxide levels in your blood will drop, and your lung function will improve in a month, notes Dr Pujan Parikh.
The scam-ridden Congress government in Chhattisgarh has become a model of misrule and people have decided to root it out in the upcoming assembly elections, he said.
We have the highest suicide rate among 10 Southeast Asian countries.
He said in the last 8-10 days, the active cases in the state stood in the range of 5,000-6,000.
In order to bring uniformity, the need for following the existing framework for either imposition of restrictions or allowing relaxations based on the burden of disease and strain on healthcare infrastructure still remain important.
'This whole story is going to become extremely murky and that discovering who is an agent of the Indian government is not necessarily a simple matter.' 'And that if Trudeau was to name (the person) who he thinks is the connection with the Indian government, that the Indian government will be sure to have some deniability and will be able to say he had nothing to do with us.'
Cases with the Omicron variant have already been detected in Karnataka and Gujarat.
