The age cap for the booster shot came at a time when another highly transmissible XE variant of the coronavirus is being reported.
Union Minister for Youth Affairs and Sports Anurag Thakur said the Board of Control for Cricket in India should consult the government before sending the cricket team to South Africa, where a new COVID-19 variant is causing havoc.
The Supreme Court on Wednesday granted protection from arrest to businessman Raj Kundra in connection with an FIR registered against him for allegedly distributing pornographic videos.
'Monkeypox is a rare but potentially serious viral illness that typically begins with flu-like illness and swelling of the lymph nodes and progresses to a rash on the face and body'
The latest variant is the most heavily mutated version discovered so far.
Coronaviruses, like other RNA viruses, can develop mutations in three different ways: by mistake from copying errors during viral replication, through interactions with other viruses infecting the same cell, or they can be induced by RNA modification systems which are part of host immunity, the researchers explained.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Monday confirmed the UK's first death from the Omicron variant of coronavirus, the first known fatality from the highly transmissible variant of Covid-19 in the world.
Delhi's R-value, which indicates the spread of COVID-19, was recorded at 2.1 this week, implying that every infected person is infecting two others in the national capital, according to an analysis by IIT-Madras.
In its weekly bulletin of December 27, released on Monday, the Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium (INSACOG) said global outbreaks of SARS-CoV-2 are increasingly shifting from Delta to Omicron.
At the same, it said the latest figures do not establish a clear trend and in no way the government is relaxed about anything at this point.
Supreme Court judge Justice D Y Chandrachud has termed the delay in communicating bail orders to prison authorities as a "very serious deficiency" and stressed the need to address it on a "war footing" as it touches the "human liberty" of every undertrial prisoner.
The patients were being administered paracetamol, and not Remdesivir drug, which was used for patients in the first and second COVID-19 waves, they said.
A combination of robust vaccination programmes and strict physical distancing rules may be enough to prevent recurring peaks of COVID-19 without greatly restricting the mobility of people, according to a modelling study.
Shares of Adani group companies witnessed a massive drubbing in morning trade on Monday, tumbling up to 25 per cent, amid reports that the National Securities Depository Ltd (NSDL) has frozen certain FPIs accounts that have holding in some of these firms.
The Delhi government has called a meeting of the Delhi Disaster Management Authority to discuss steps that need to be taken in view of threat of a new Covid-19 variant from African countries, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said on Friday.
A senior citizen was mistaken for dead at an elderly care centre in Shanghai and sent to a morgue where he was found alive, prompting authorities to launch an investigation into the shocking incident that triggered a new wave of anguish in the locked down city.
A whitepaper released by the Chinese government gave a lengthy explanation to refute the allegations of cover up and delay by Beijing on reporting the COVID-19 outbreak last year in Wuhan. United States President Donald Trump and leaders of several countries have accused China of not being transparent in reporting the deadly disease, leading to huge human casualties and economic crisis across the world.
The yet-to-be peer-reviewed study, posted recently on the preprint repository BioRxiv, found that the Alpha, Beta, Delta, and Omicron variants exhibited more than two-fold longer survival on plastic and skin surfaces, than the Wuhan strain.
South Africa will remain on the lowest 'level 1' of its five-level lockdown strategy to fight the COVID-19 pandemic despite the global panic around the detection of the Omicron variant in the country, President Cyril Ramaphosa has announced .
The South African authorities said the detected cases and percentage of people testing positive are both increasing quickly, particularly in particularly in most populated province of Gauteng, North West and Limpopo regions of the country.
The World Health Organisation has issued warning against XE, a new variant of Omicron first detected in the UK.
The WHOS has long held that the coronavirus is spread primarily by large respiratory droplets when an infected person coughs or sneezes.
The Centre has asked states and Union territories to review, amend or do away with additional Covid-19 restrictions after considering the trend of new cases and positivity rate in their regions, citing sustained downward trend in the nationwide case trajectory.
Of the 46,164 fresh coronavirus cases recorded in the country in a 24-hour span, 31,445 were in Kerala. Maharashtra has reported 5,031 new cases and 216 fresh fatalities on Wednesday.
Maharashtra is in the beginning of a second COVID-19 wave, a central team report has said, highlighting that there is very limited active effort to track, test, isolate cases and quarantine contacts, and there is no adherence to COVID appropriate behaviour among people in rural and urban areas in the state.
The 27-year-old Rohini resident, who had tested Covid positive after returning to Delhi from Dubai, said, even after the home isolation restrictions are lifted, 'I have been told that I will be under 14-day observation at home, and doctors will check on me intermittently'.
The Premier League found a record 42 cases of COVID-19 among players and staff at various clubs over the past week.
The prime minister also called for more RT-PCR tests.
The highly transmissible Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 has mutated further to form the 'Delta plus' or 'AY.1' variant but there is no immediate cause for concern in India as its incidence in the country is still low, scientists in New Delhi said.
Unveiling his infrastructure conglomerate's green vision, billionaire Gautam Adani on Tuesday said his group will invest $20 billion over the next 10 years in renewable energy generation and component manufacturing and will produce the world's cheapest green electron. The port-to-energy conglomerate plans to triple its renewable power generation capacity over the next four years, foray into green hydrogen production, power all data centres with renewable energy, turn its ports into net carbon zero by 2025, and plans to spend over 75 per cent of capital expenditure until 2025 in green technologies, he said. Speaking at JP Morgan India Investor Summit, Adani Group chairman said the USD 20 billion investment will be in renewable energy generation, component manufacturing, transmission and distribution.
Beijing reported 53 new COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours, taking the total to over 500 cases as the capital continues enforcing strict anti-virus measures and postponed school reopening for a week as a precautionary measure.
There was a 'fascist threat' to democracy in Sri Lanka and 'we can't let them tear up our Constitution', acting President Ranil Wickremesinghe told the crisis-hit nation on Wednesday, as he vowed to restore normalcy as well as stop the destruction of state property.
The first study used spatial analysis to show that the earliest known COVID-19 cases, diagnosed in December 2019, were centered on the Wuhan market.
Monetary Policy Committee keeps key interest rate (repo) unchanged at 4% for 7th consecutive time; Consequently, reverse repo rate too remains unchanged at 3.35%; Bank rate also remains same at 4.25%;
Thousands gathered at the 'COVID trial' music festival in Liverpool.
The Karnataka government told the Supreme Court on Wednesday that the state has not touched any "religious aspect" in the hijab ban row and that the restriction on wearing the Islamic headscarf is limited to the classroom.
'All actions for COVID-19 should be the same as for other routine health conditions.' 'There is no need to report the matter in the media all the time; not on front page please.'
If two individuals in an indoor space are not wearing a mask, in just 10 minutes, the infected person can transmit the virus to the other person, while if both are wearing a fitted N-95 mask, it requires over 600 hours of exposure for transmission, he said.
Gautam Adani on Tuesday said his ports-to-energy conglomerate never slowed or stopped investing in the country as the group's success is based on its alignment with the India growth story. Speaking at the annual shareholder meeting of the group companies, he said the previously announced $70 billion investment in new energy business will help turn India from being a net importer of oil and gas to an exporter of clean energy. "Never have we walked away from investing in India, never have we slowed our investments," he said. "We believe our scale, our diversified business, and our track record of performance positions us very strongly to continue to perform well in a variety of market conditions."
If that outcome were to happen, the Modi government would be responsible for presiding over a self-inflicted national catastrophe.
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