The latest variant is the most heavily mutated version discovered so far.
If you are partially vaccinated and have another dose left, do check for travel rules and restrictions before making a booking or confirming your payment.
Backing the 12-16 weeks gap between the two doses of Covishield in the country, the chief investigator of the AstraZeneca vaccine clinical trials on Friday said that the level of protection provided by one dose of the preventive significantly increases in the second and third months after the jab.
The growth in the contact-intensive portion of the economy trailed our expectation, highlighting how imperative it is for confidence to improve, either through accelerated vaccinations or otherwise, to drive a sustainable recovery in these sectors, asserts Aditi Nayar.
'The Cauvery is not dependable as Karnataka will never consider our needs.'
Sensing a huge opportunity in the healthcare sector during the Covid-19 pandemic and its aftermath, private equity (PE) players are upping their investments in the space. According to data from research platform VCCEdge, the PEs have together invested a staggering $583.82 million in the first five months of 2021 in five deals, which is the highest investment in the sector in the last five calendar years - from 2016 to 2020. The second highest investment in the sector took place in 2017, when PEs invested $503 million in 18 deals, with an average deal size of $29. 9 million.
Tata Sons has started the process of due diligence of state-owned Air India and its subsidiary Air India Express. Sources said the group has appointed Bain and Company and Seabury Group for this purpose. Once complete, a financial bid will be submitted and a deal to take over the airline is likely to fructify by end of this year or even earlier, people involved in the process said. Simultaneously, the group has brought in veterans in the aviation business from Delta and United Airlines to prepare a plan for post-merger integration of Air India with its existing airline ventures. Tata Sons operates Vistara - a 51:49 percent joint venture with Singapore Airlines and Air Asia India, in which Tatas hold 83.67 per cent stakes.
Ajit Mishra, vice president, research, Religare Broking, answers your queries.
'We have to take all preparations because the third wave is likely to start from September-October onward'
Four persons, including two soldiers, were killed when a ship belonging to an Indian company was attacked by pirates in Nigeria's oil-rich southern delta.
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 .
As many as 721,469 appointments were made through the national booking service on Friday -- the day of the announcement -- at an average of more than eight every second. To cope with demand, the NHS said it is using stadiums and football grounds as giant vaccination centres.
"Stalin is the future of the party," said late Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam patriarch M Karunanidhi about six years ago at a party meet when his son was party treasurer.
In good news for farmers of Cauvery delta region in Tamil Nadu facing a grim crop situation due to drought like condition, Karnataka has released over 12,000 cusecs of water into the inter-state river with the Kabini dam surplusing following heavy rains in its catchment areas.
Wicketkeeper-batsman Rishabh Pant and throwdown specialist Dayanand Garani tested positive for COVID-19, while two others were placed in precautionary isolation as the dreaded virus hit the Indian cricket team ahead of next month's Test series against England.
'Should the new ISIS leadership opt for a consolidation, the Afghan-Pakistan border would be an attractive place,' warns Brigadier S K Chatterji (retd).
The stage of alert will be based on positivity rate (on two consecutive days), cumulative number of new cases (over a week) and average oxygenated-bed occupancy (for a week).
Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick said there will be a move towards greater "personal responsibility" as the UK prepares to end lockdown restrictions from July 19.
Prime Minister Modi has certainly pulled back, and his political capital -- dependent as it is on an image that he knows best and never retreats -- may have taken a bit of a beating. But, equally, it is hard to say that the protesters have 'won', argues Mihir S Sharma.
"Zero is an unlikely figure. The virus is mutating and it is difficult to predict it's future behaviour,
71 districts reported Covid case positivity rate of more than 10 per cent in the week from June 23 to 29, the government said, adding that the second wave of COVID-19 is not over.
Under the deal, the PMK will be supporting the AIADMK in the bypolls expected to 21 assembly constituencies in Tamil Nadu, he said.
Two aborted missions, three different ministers, multiple rule changes and two decades later, Indian taxpayers will no longer have to pay Rs 20 crore per day to keep the loss-making Air India flying. While opposition Congress expectedly attacked the decision as selling the family silver, DIPAM secretary Tuhin Kanta Pandey said what Tata is getting is not a cash cow but an airline which is bleeding where money needs to be pumped in to refurbish obsolete aircraft and dust up strangled ones while being unable to touch any employee for one year and only be able to resize staff after paying a VRS. "It won't be a very easy task there. Only advantage is they (new Air India owner) are paying the price which they think they can manage. "They are not taking the excessive debt accumulated to fund years of losses. We are continuing it as an ongoing concern.... This process has also saved huge amount of taxpayers money going forward," Pandey told PTI.
Is the worst of the Covid crisis behind India? As cases dip three weeks after Diwali, the answer is a possible yes, say several experts, attributing the downslide to a large section of the population already exposed to the virus during the second wave and a stepped up vaccination campaign.
The stock, which is a play on the growth story of Indian Railways, has corrected 15 per cent from its 52-week high level of Rs 2,072.95 scaled on March 9. Yet, this has not deterred brokerages from holding a bullish view on the stock.
We need to give a booster shot to all our frontline workers first as if they fall victim to Omicron, the health system will collapse, points out Ramesh Menon.
'The Cauvery river has become excessively politicised by all political parties.' 'They see a vote bank in an emotive issue of this kind.'
With the Omicron variant of coronavirus slowly spreading its tentacles in the country, a number of states enhanced surveillance to trace, track and quarantine contacts of COVID-19 positive persons while Delhi began genome sequencing of samples of all infected people and has prohibited Christmas and New Year gatherings.
Issues including the Rafale deal, construction of Ram Temple and Cauvery river water caused disruptions in the House.
Developed in-house, the 1.5-litre engine comes mated with six-speed transmission and offers improved performance.
With flood waters of Mahanadi river system slowly receding in the delta region, Orissa government on Tuesday accelerated relief work in the affected areas with focus on health care, sanitation and supply of safe drinking water.
'And they are going to be milder because we are dealing with the vaccinated and are much richer in terms of the immune response in the population.'
World leaders thanked India for its help and support in combating the coronavirus pandemic through "early and meaningful" shipments of COVID-19 vaccine doses, as they addressed the high-level UN General Assembly session this year.
'We know, from our experience of this virus, that there's something known as long COVID-19, where you have this persistent fatigue and some people have lost their neurological acuteness and they are not as sharp as they used to be.'
While small-caps have delivered higher returns than their large-cap peers, investors would do well to recognise the incremental risk of investing in these companies.
Most of those who tested positive either recently arrived from African countries or were in contact with such people.
Airlines are set to buy 30,900 aircraft valued at $3.6 trillion in the next 20 years.
The villagers have now kept firecrackers ready to hail a win for Kamala Harris, also a US Senator.
'If a doctor is kind of trying to say that there's an urgency, relatives should definitely get a second opinion.'
In the maintenance department of an auto component company, the original grinding wheel motor was drawing 18 amp current using a delta connection. Considering the motor's function, this seemed high to the motor operator.
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