As India witnessed the highest number of Covid cases in over four months, former All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) director Dr Randeep Guleria on Wednesday said the new XBB.1.16 variant could be driving the recent rise but emphasised there was no need for panic as long it does not cause severe illness and deaths.
The second wave of Coronavirus pandemic is not yet over and the third wave depends on the Covid-19 appropriate behaviour by the people, said Randeep Guleria, the Director of Delhi AIIMS, on Friday.
The presence of spike protein facilitates a virus' entry into the host cell and is responsible for making it transmissible and causing infection.
The COVID-19 vaccines can be "tweaked" to provide protection against new variants of the virus, All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Delhi, Director Dr Randeep Guleria said.
The renowned pulmonologist, who was part of the national COVID task force, highlighted the need for research on developing vaccines which will cover not only the current circulating strains but also from the emerging variants.
Dr Guleria was appointed as the director for a term of five years on March 28, 2017.
"Dr Manmohan Singh, soon after becoming the prime minister, had himself carried a small table for us to have tea comfortably at his Safdarjung Lane residence instead of asking his house help," Dr Srinath Reddy, who was the chairperson of the PM's medical panel, recalled.
AIIMS-Delhi is among the 12 sites selected by the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) for conducting Phase I and II randomised, double-blind and placebo-controlled clinical trials of Covaxin.
If people are careful and India is able to vaccinate a large number of population, then the third wave of COVID-19 pandemic may not even come, said All India Institute of Medical Sciences Director Dr Randeep Guleria on Thursday.
'It was of no use if given early in mild and asymptomatic patients and also if administered too late'
The current Covid situation in India is under control and there are no reasons to panic, said Dr N K Arora, the chairperson of National Technical Advisory Group on Immunization (NTAGI).
In a video issued by the Health Ministry, Dr Randeep Guleria, Director of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) answered commonly asked questions regarding the dosage of the vaccine saying that two doses of the vaccine will have to be taken 28 days apart and protective levels of antibodies generally would develop two weeks after the second dose.
Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya on Tuesday told Bharatiya Janata Party MPs that Covid vaccination for children is likely to start soon, sources said.
But the numbers have continued to rise in 23 states including Bihar, Goa, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Kerala.
According to some experts, there is not much difference in the number of seasonal flu cases and that of COVID-19, even though they stressed that surveillance for newer variants should continue in the off chance of a new lineage of coronavirus catching the country off guard.
As India grappled with a raging second wave of the coronavirus pandemic, the government on Monday stressed on observing COVID-19 appropriate behaviours.
'Viral infections rise in winter and better care needs to be taken in the next few months.'
India Today ranks the best colleges in the country.
They stressed that classification of cases into mild, moderate and severe categories based just on respiratory symptoms should be relooked to include other organ involvement.
The Indian Olympic Association secretary general Rajeev Mehta on Monday requested the Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan to expedite the process for the vaccination of the country's Tokyo Olympic-bound athletes and officials against COVID-19.
About 50 countries, including Canada, Mexico, Nigeria and Panama, have shown interest in having a Co-WIN like system to run their vaccination drive, a senior official said on Monday, adding India is ready to share the open source software free of cost.
'There is no data to show this virus is more deadlier.'
'We should hope that things are not as bad as in the United Kingdom'
Delhi recorded 954 cases on Monday, according to a health department bulletin. The bulletin said the number of tests conducted too was the lowest in July.
According to the AIIMS director, there are 10-15 per cent of people who may witness severe infection and may need extra medicines like Remdesivir, oxygen or plasma. Less than five per cent of patients need to be operated on a ventilator, he informed.
"One CT scan is equivalent to 300 to 400 chest x-rays. According to data, repeated CT scans in younger age groups increase the risk of cancer in later life. Exposing yourself to radiation again and again may cause damage. So, there is no point in doing CT scan in mild COVID-19 if the oxygen saturation is normal," Guleria said.
The tenure of the incumbent AIIMS director, Dr Randeep Guleria, which was set to end on March 24, was extended by three months.
Similar traffic restrictions in other cities did not see a significant improvement in air quality only because car owners begin making more trips during their unrestricted periods. The other apprehension, as seen in other cities, is that residents have bought secondhand cars, using the other number plate so that they can continue to drive to their work place, thereby defeating the very purpose of this scheme.
The teams will visit the districts reporting high number of COVID cases and support the state's efforts towards strengthening containment, surveillance, testing, infection prevention and control measures, and efficient clinical management of positive cases.
The first COVID-19 vaccine shots in India were given on Saturday to nearly two lakh frontline healthcare and sanitary workers as Prime Minister Narendra Modi rolled out the world's largest inoculation drive against the pandemic that has caused 1,52,093 deaths and upended millions of lives in the country.
Kids mostly have mild illnesses and recover with just symptomatic treatment.
The 93-year-old leader was admitted to the hospital on June 11.
The states were advised to conduct surveillance and report district-wise severe acute respiratory illness and influenza-like illness cases on a daily basis and also to send these for genome sequencing to the mapped INSACOG laboratories.
These kinds of assumptions to be used for a nation of India's size and "to put us in poor light is not desirable"
"None of those infected is serious. We are taking all precautions related to Covid-19," Director General (Delhi Prisons) Sandeep Goel said.
Shah also struck a placatory tone in his interview and said that there was coordination between the Centre and the state in tackling Covid in Delhi.
The trial is being conducted in three phases by segregating children into categories according to their age. The first trial was started in the age group of 12 to 18 years followed by the age group of 6 to 12. Trials for children between the ages of and 2-6 years are currently undergoing trials.
'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.'
One 'severe' and 51 'minor' cases of AEFI (adverse events following immunisation) were reported among healthcare workers who were administered the coronavirus vaccine in Delhi on the first day of the COVID-19 vaccination drive on Saturday, official figures showed.
As of Friday, Gujarat's COVID-19 count stood at 7,403 cases, of which 5,260 were from Ahmedabad district alone, while of the 449 deaths in the state, 343 were from the city.
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