India is the fifth worst-hit nation by the COVID-19 pandemic after the United States, Brazil, Russia and the United Kingdom, according to the Johns Hopkins University data.
Among the most widely used packages have been treatment of cataract, dental root canal and normal delivery of babies.
The Centre said the upsurge of COVID-19 cases is happening in cities and the Omicron variant is the predominant circulating strain.
The announcement of the officer came after the violent protests broke out in some parts of the country wherein incidents like stone-pelting and setting trains on fire were reported.
As states grapple with a shortage of coronavirus vaccines, the Centre on Thursday said that over two billion doses will be made available in the country in five months between August and December, enough to vaccinate the entire population.
While presenting her 2021-22 Union Budget, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had set a fiscal deficit target of 6.8 per cent of nominal gross domestic product (GDP) against the 2020-21 Revised Estimate of 9.5 per cent. The fiscal correction in the upcoming 2022-23 Union Budget is unlikely to be that steep. Even as discussions among top Budget-makers are ongoing, the fiscal deficit target for 2022-23 may likely be in the range of 6.5-6.8 per cent.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) will invest nearly $4.4 billion (Rs 36,000 crore) in India by 2030 and support more than 48,000 jobs externally through a new regional service launched on Tuesday, said the on-demand Cloud computing company. AWS Asia Pacific (Hyderabad) is the company's second infrastructure region in India, six years after it opened its first Cloud region in Mumbai in 2016. The Hyderabad region will give customers access to AWS technologies for data analytics, security, machine learning, and artificial intelligence.
The panel was informed that the economic impact of the second wave of viral infection was "asynchronous in its onset and wider in its spread particularly in rural hinterland", a source said.
Claims of a spike in poverty and inequality in India during the Covid-19 pandemic are patently false as such claims are based on uncomparable different surveys, according to a paper co-authored by eminent economist Arvind Panagariya. The paper also noted that inequality fell in the country during Covid years, both in rural and urban areas as well as nationally. Panagariya, Columbia University Professor and former vice chairman of NITI Aayog and Vishal More of Intelink Advisors, New Delhi have co-authored a detailed paper 'Poverty and Inequality in India: Before and After Covid-19'.
A steady decline in new COVID-19 cases has been recorded in India for the last 20 days, with 24 states witnessing a dip in active cases since the last week, the Union health ministry said.
In containment areas, movements of people is totally banned and essential services are delivered at the doorsteps.
The government has merged the Department of Public Enterprises (DPE) with the finance ministry to give it a better control over state-owned firms and facilitate its ambitious privatisation programme. Finance ministry will now have six departments while DPE's hereto parent ministry, the ministry of heavy industries and public enterprises will now be called the ministry of heavy industries. Previously, the disinvestment ministry - created under the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government - was merged with the finance ministry and is now a department under it. Also, Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) was abolished and administration of foreign investments was given to the finance ministry (FinMin).
This is the fifth consecutive day that coronavirus infections have increased by more than 15,000. There has been a surge of 3,38,324 infections from June 1 till date.
As the petition points out, new medical colleges entail adjunct government hospitals, thus making specialised medical care that much more accessible to the vast majority of population that otherwise could not afford high-cost medical care in the private sector, N Sathiya Moorthy points out.
The panel is expected to suggest various relief measures to put economy back on track as soon as possible, the sources said.
What is particularly worrying is that the vast majority will not have access to testing or even to proper treatment. These cases could have been avoided if the government had shown the political will to do so, observes Rashme Sehgal.
E-cigarettes pose a huge health risk to users, who more often than not are adolescents and young adults
Stating that dentists, auxiliaries as well as the patients undergoing dental procedures are at high risk of cross-infection as most dental procedures require a close contact with the patients' oral cavity, saliva, blood and respiratory tract secretions, the ministry has advised that all patients must be treated with due precautions.
Several private hospitals across the country said they have no clarity on procuring COVID-19 vaccines under the new policy announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and that it has led to the vaccination being put on hold at their centres.
The government must set up a Bank Investment Company to shrink its role in PSBs, if we are serious about tackling the two persistent issues - lax corporate governance practices and discretionary decision-making, says Shyamal Majumdar.
Delhi Lieutenant Governor V K Saxena has directed the chief secretary to recover Rs 97 crore from the Aam Aadmi Party for political advertisements it published in the guise of government advertisements, official sources said.
The 606 positive cases includes 43 foreign nationals, the ministry said. On Tuesday, the number of cases was 519.
The Serum Institute of India has informed the Centre that it will be able to supply around 22 crore doses of Covishield in October as the Union government has announced resuming export of surplus Covid vaccines in the coming fourth quarter under the 'Vaccine Maitri' programme, official sources said.
'Lifting of lockdown should be very gradual. Some facilities should remain closed through the month of May like schools, colleges, malls, cinema halls, religious places and markets'
After a long hiatus of more than 20 months, the government had on November 26 announced the resumption of scheduled international commercial flights from December 15.
The Supreme Court on Monday asked the Centre that it may consider tweaking the protocols for the burial of bodies of COVID-19 victims in a way that essential tenets of the Zoroastrian belief are also taken care of.
Addressing his council of ministers in a video conference, Modi asked them to prepare business continuity plans to fight the economic impact of COVID-19 on a war footing, but also asserted that this crisis is an opportunity to boost the 'Make-in-India' initiative and reduce dependence on other countries.
Indian customers will have wider travel options as airlines introduce new flights from the end of March. While Malaysian Airlines and Turkish Airlines are resuming passenger flights to India after a gap of two years, Air France-KLM and Lufthansa Group will scale up their existing service in a graded manner in the summer schedule. Emirates, the largest foreign airline operating in India, too, is looking to restore its pre-Covid-19 schedule of 172 flights per week.
One Chinese source informed ANI that 10 million new infections are probably occurring daily in China.
The supplementary nutrition programme and the Poshan Abhiyaan under the Women and Child Development Ministry has been merged to launch Mission Poshan 2.0 to strengthen nutritional content, delivery, outreach, and outcome, according to the Union Budget announced on Monday.
The guidelines lay down the processes and premises redesigning, including proper placement of equipments. Yoga institutes and gymnasiums have been asked to plan the floor area based on four metres squared per person.
Authorities have put almost the entire country under lockdown, banning gathering of people and suspending road, rail and air traffic till March 31.
Indian Olympic Association president Narinder Batra hopes India's medal haul can touch the double-digit mark in Tokyo, which will be an unprecedented achievement.
All people who have arrived in Saudi Arabia from European countries, as well as other states where the new coronavirus strain has emerged, will have to self-isolate at home for two weeks. Those who have visited these countries in the past three months will need to get tested for Covid-19, according to SPA.
The thanks-giving activities will start with laying of wreaths at the police memorial in Delhi and in several other cities on Sunday morning to honour the police personnel deployed in enforcement of the nationwide lockdown, officials said. It will be followed by fly-pasts by fighter and transport aircraft of the Indian Air Force, covering a sizeable number of cities and towns across the country between 10 am and 11 am, officials said.
'The situation is especially serious in major hotspot districts or emerging hotspots like Ahmedabad and Surat (Gujarat), Thane (Maharashtra), Hyderabad (Telangana), and Chennai (Tamil Nadu),' the MHA statement said.
The court said the situation is "going out of control" in Gujarat.
These 51 cases were detected from over 45,000 samples sequenced so far in the country.
All international passengers will henceforth be screened at airports, Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said at a press conference. Earlier, travellers from only 12 countries were screened at airports for the disease that has claimed over 3,000 lives and infected more than 90,000 worldwide.
'There has been no significant increase in the number of fatalities.'
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