During the day, Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan held a meeting to review preparedness for COVID-19 management, through video conference with health ministers, chief secretaries of all states and UTs, central ministers and representatives from the related organisations and stressed on the need for keeping testing and quarantine facilities, isolation wards, and labs in active readiness.
The order of five-day mandatory institutional quarantine was opposed by Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and his Deputy Manish Sisodia in a meeting of Delhi State Disaster Management Authority (DDMA) on Saturday.
Nurses in government hospitals across the country on Saturday called off their indefinite strike after reaching a compromise with the Centre, in a major relief for Delhi and some other cities battling rising cases of dengue and chikungunya.
This follows a widespread criticism of its pricing policy as it sold Covaxin to the central government at Rs 150 per dose.
Former Bharatiya Janata Party leader Yashwant Sinha who joined Trinamool Congress (TMC) on Saturday said his tipping point to join the party was when West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee got attacked in Nandigram.
Swamy died at the Holy Family Hospital, where he was admitted on May 29, in Mumbai on Monday, a day after he suffered a cardiac arrest and was put on ventilator support.
Maharashtra Health Minister Rajesh Tope on Thursday told Prime Minister Narendra Modi that mucormycosis or black fungus, which has claimed 90 lives in the state so far, is a matter of prime concern for it at present, and the state government needs more supply of the medicine used in its treatment.
How a swanky Mumbai cultural venue was transformed into a contact-less facility to combat coronavirus.
In a letter to the states and union territories, Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan advised implementing strategic interventions for containment like imposition of night curfew, strict regulation of large gatherings, curtailing numbers in marriages and funerals besides increasing testing and surveillance.
Choubey said till February 4 total 81 AEFIs, which is 0.096 per cent of the total beneficiaries who have been administered Covaxin, have been reported.
The CBI, which is the National Central Bureau for India tasked with coordination with the International Criminal Police Organisation (Interpol), immediately swung into action and alerted all Interpol Liaison Officers (ILOs) to alert their respective police organisations about such unscrupulous supplies, they said.
As some BJP pollsters concede, the Modi leadership's sweeping success in elections 2019, especially across central India, owed not to Hindutva ideology, but to welfare schemes, all of them borrowed from Tamil Nadu, reveals N Sathiya Moorthy.
With 11 people succumbing to swine flu in Telangana so far this year, the state government on Wednesday sought Centre's help to check the spread of the deadly virus.
This is how Mumbai's civic administration, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation along with Mumbai Police are dividing the city into 'Containment Zones' to prevent the spread of the deadly Coronavirus as the tally of those testing positive and those dying because of it shows no sign of abatement.
In a series of tweets on Friday, the Indian-American physician said that his 4-year-old daughter last week tested positive for the virus first with fever and sore throat.
The urgent need to address a large number of beneficiaries waiting for second dose of vaccine was stressed in a meeting held by Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan and Dr R S Sharma, the Chairman of Empowered Group on Technology and Data Management to Combat COVID-19, with state officials to review the status of COVID-19 vaccination on Tuesday.
The joint secretary also said a high-level task force to work on frontiers of science related to vaccines and drug testing was formed on Sunday.
Peter Mukerjea's lawyers move court to allow him a heart operation at a private hospital.
The Supreme Court on Thursday said the country needs to be prepared for the third wave of COVID-19 which experts say could be more harmful, especially for children, and emphasised upon the need to create buffer stock of oxygen.
According to the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Centre, more than 4,000 people in the US have died due to COVID-19 and nearly 190,000 have been infected by it.
The fatality rate is down to 3.1 per cent and the recovery rate has improved to 37.5 per cent, he said.
The Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech has fixed the price of its COVID-19 vaccine, Covaxin, at Rs 600 per dose for state governments and at Rs 1,200 per dose for private hospitals. The Pune-based Serum Institute of India, the world's largest vaccine maker in terms of volume, has announced a price of Rs 400 per dose for its COVID-19 vaccine, 'Covishield', for state governments and Rs 600 per dose for private hospitals.
This perversity in vaccine distribution needs immediate correction. It requires a complete withdrawal of the 'Liberalised Vaccine Policy', and a 100 per cent takeover of the vaccine procurement by the GoI, asserts R Ramakumar.
A total of 116 persons, who had come in contact with some of the infected persons, have been put under quarantine-- 94 in their homes and 22 in various hospitals, the sources said.
As the Indian Army reported its first case of the infection with a 34-year-old soldier testing positive in Leh, the Army said it has taken a series of precautionary measures to prevent the spread of coronavirus among the forces such as checking flu symptoms among soldiers on their return from leave and cancelling non-essential travel, conferences and recruitment drives.
The governor has returned the bill, adopted by the state assembly in September 2021 and the report of a high level committee constituted by the Tamil Nadu government in this connection to the assembly Speaker M Appavu.
'If the government has not listened to scientists, it must.' 'It's obvious that this is a science-driven campaign (fight), a science-driven situation.' 'We cannot afford to ignore the science.'
Covaxin is being developed by Bharat Biotech jointly with the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR)- National Institute of Virology (NIV). The Phase III human clinical trials of Covaxin began mid-November, targeted to be done in 26,000 volunteers and it is the country's first and only Phase III efficacy study for a COVID-19 vaccine, a press release from the vaccine maker said on Saturday night.
The Kerala high court has directed the Centre to allow scheduling, on CoWIN portal, of second Covishield dose after four weeks from the first for those who want to take it earlier than the present suggested gap of 84 days.
'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.'
The COVID-19 case fatality rate has reduced from around 3.33 per cent in mid-June to 2.25 per cent.
This will boost availability of these items as well as make them cheaper, it said, adding that Modi also directed the revenue department to ensure seamless and quick custom clearance of such equipment.
Three mentees pay homage to Sherna Gandhy, the legendary journalist and editor who passed into the ages on April 28 after a long battle with cancer.
By Thursday, 830 confirmed cases of pneumonia, caused by the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV), had been reported in 29 provincial-level regions in the country.
An important focus of the dry run will be on management of any possible adverse events following immunisation.
They also demanded action against officials of the National Investigation Agency (NIA), which is conducting a probe into the Elgar Parishad case, and former superintendent of the Taloja jail.
'Almost 70 per cent production time of a vaccine is dedicated to quality control, which is done through several hundred tests.'
Experts believe that under-reporting is likely to cause an underestimation of the spread of the disease.
'Due to the huge unemployment among displaced Adivasis they undertake any job that comes their way even if it means working and living in hazardous conditions.' 'The situation is such that out of every five tribals who migrate in search of employment only three come back alive.'
