The new report highlights how different parts of the intelligence community have arrived at disparate judgments about the pandemic's origin.
The Centre said that there is no reason to believe presently on the that they are responsible for the surge in cases in some districts in these two states.
"We continue to call on China to be transparent in sharing data and to conduct the necessary investigations and share the results. Understanding how the pandemic began remains both a moral and scientific imperative," Ghebreyesus said.
The research, published in the journal JAMA Pediatrics, is the first large-scale study to compare the health outcomes of coronavirus infection from Omicron and Delta in the age group which is not yet vaccinated.
The study, published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, also demonstrates that the immunity built up from previous non-SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus infections does not prevent individuals from getting COVID-19.
As the Omicron variant of Sars-CoV-2 takes centrestage, vaccine makers in India are of the view that scaling up the existing vaccines to make them more effective is possible.
COVID-19 may be a seasonal infection linked to low temperatures and humidity, much like seasonal influenza, according to new 'robust' evidence found by researchers.
While Lupin is working on a Remdesivir powder for inhalation, Glenmark has tied up with a Canadian Biotech firm for nitric oxide nasal spray that reduces Sars-CoV-2 viral load and thus transmission.
The global health agency has asked Chinese health officials to share data on genetic sequencing, hospitalisations, deaths and vaccinations.
Maharashtra has recorded a 17.7 per cent rise in coronavirus cases compared to last week, according to a state health department bulletin.
'If SARS-CoV-2 is anything like the first one, we expect antibodies to last at least two years, and it would be unlikely for anything much shorter'
'If there are any symptoms/variants of concern, states can prepare accordingly.'
"This antibody is both highly neutralising (meaning it works very well at low concentrations) and broadly neutralising (meaning it works against all variants)," said Michael S Diamond, a professor at Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis, US.
BA.4 and BA.5 are sub-variants of the highly-transmissible Omicron variant of the virus.
A 29-year-old NRI who recently came to Vadodara in Gujarat from South Africa has been found infected with the BA.5 sub-variant of the highly-transmittable Omicron variant of coronavirus, a health official said on Tuesday.
Senior virologist Shahid Jameel on Sunday resigned as the chairman of scientific advisory group of Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium, a forum set up by union government in December last year for laboratory and epidemiological surveillance of circulating strains of COVID-19 in India.
According to the scientists, people infected with SARS-CoV-2 might be spreading the virus without recognizing, or prior to recognizing, symptoms.
The new and highly transmissible Omicron variant of the deadly coronavirus has increased immune escape compared with the Delta variant and appears likely to become the dominant SARS-CoV-2 strain globally in 2022, according to Singapore-based experts.
The United States intelligence community has failed to reach any firm conclusion on the exact origin of COVID-19 and is split on whether it leaked from a lab in China or emerged in nature, even though it does not believe the virus was developed as a biological weapon, according to results of a detailed review ordered by President Joe Biden.
Bharat Biotech's Covaxin has demonstrated 77.8 per cent effectiveness against symptomatic COVID-19 and 65.2 per cent protection against the new Delta variant.
The researchers, including those from the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (UT Health San Antonio) in the United States, developed two molecules that inhibit the molecular 'scissor' enzyme used by the coronavirus called SARS-CoV-2-PLpro.
The study, published in the journal Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, noted that the 'nanobodies' can prevent infection with the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 by blocking its interaction with the protein ACE2, which it uses as a gateway to enter and infect cells.
The team led by researchers at the University of Maryland in the United States found that people infected with SARS-CoV-2 exhale infectious virus in their breath, and those infected with the Alpha variant put 43 to 100 times more virus into the air than people infected with the original strains of the virus.
Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar on Thursday said future decisions on COVID-19 SOPs will be taken in consultation with the Union Health Ministry and the state Task Force, amid a difference between the Centre and the state over guidelines for international travellers in the wake of the new variant of SARS-CoV2.
ZyCoV-D is a three-dose vaccine administered intradermally.
The study also indicated that the risk seems to increase with each infection.
The durability of immunity post COVID-19 vaccination persists for nine months or more and a precautionary dose of vaccine which will be administered to healthcare and frontline workers and citizens above 60 years with comorbidities is to mitigate the severity of infection, hospitalisation and death, the government said on Thursday.
The World Health Organisation said in its latest update that the XE recombinant (BA.1-BA.2) was first detected in the UK on January 19 and more than 600 sequences have been reported and confirmed since then.
A new variant of SARS-CoV-2, the virus which cause COVID-19, has been detected in South Africa and many other countries globally which could be more transmissible and evade protection provided by vaccines, according to study.
The endemic stage is when a population learns to live with a virus. It is very different from the epidemic stage when the virus overwhelms a population.
The study describes a new blood test which pinpoints the immune system molecules called antibodies in infected individuals that specifically target a unique piece of the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2's spike protein.
INSACOG experts are conducting genomic analysis of a coronavirus case reported as that of the highly transmissible XE variant by Mumbai civic officials, though scientific evidence so far does not indicate it to be so, official sources said on Wednesday.
Covaxin, a whole-virion inactivated SARS-CoV-2 vaccine used for mass immunization in the country, showed a 65.2 per cent protection against the Delta variant in a double-blind, randomized, multicentre, phase 3 clinical trial.
'Delta continues to be the dominant lineage for new cases across all parts of India in recent samples and remains the most rapidly rising lineage globally that is responsible for multiple outbreaks, including across Southeast Asia, which shows the fastest growth in new cases globally,' the INSACOG said.
Using this sequence data, the researchers traced the origins and evolution of SARS-CoV-2 by focusing on the tell-tale features of the virus.
'Given that the globally most prevalent clade of SARS-CoV-2 is also predominant in India, any vaccine or drug that gets developed in the world should also prove effective in India'
Antibodies produced by two doses of mRNA vaccines against the original and early variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus wane substantially over time, and offer essentially no protection against Omicron, according to a study that highlights the importance of a booster dose.
The ICMR claimed that no country has yet reported successful isolation and culture of the UK-variant of SARS-CoV-2.
Results of an interim study recently published in The Lancet showed that two doses of Covaxin, also known as BBV152, had 77.8 per cent efficacy against symptomatic disease and present no serious safety concerns.
Lack of access to the cosmonaut training programmes would also be a hindrance for ISRO's planned manned missions, explains Devangshu Datta.
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