Days after it faced nationwide anti-government protests against its stringent zero-Covid policy, China in a major shift of its coronavirus response policies has announced that it will scrap quarantine for international travellers from January 8 as it reopens its borders and comes out of international isolation after nearly three years.
B K Tyagi, director of the Madurai-based Centre for Research in Medical Entomology, talks with Rediff.com's Shobha Warrier about how dengue fever can be controlled.
Due to globalisation, growing economy, aging population and changing lifestyle, India will face a tsunami of chronic diseases such as cancer.
'Whatever modelling we have, people are saying end of July or beginning of August we will see a peak of COVID-19 in Maharashtra.' 'After which the decline will begin.'
'Viral infections rise in winter and better care needs to be taken in the next few months.'
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.
The man had attended a stag party recently in Manali in Himachal Pradesh.
Women who receive the mRNA COVID-19 vaccine during pregnancy pass high levels of antibodies to their babies, according to a study.
Chinese President Xi Jinping has called for undiminished vigilance on the prevention and control work of the COVID-19 as the situation in the Wuhan City and Hubei Province remains severe
According to medical practitioners, the treatment is especially useful in controlling disease among those who have not received the vaccine or got only one shot and also the high-risk contacts of a patient.
The United Kingdom has already added India to its travel "red list" on a precautionary basis after reporting 103 cases of a coronavirus variant first identified in India, the country's health minister Matt Hancock said on Monday.
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.
In its morning update, the Union health ministry said the total number of positive cases has reached 2,16,919 with a record spike of 9,304 new cases since Wednesday 8 am across the country, while the death toll has increased to 6,075 with 260 more fatalities in this period. A PTI tally of figures announced by different states and union territories, as of 9.50 pm, showed a higher number of confirmed cases across the country at 2,17,389 and the death toll at 6,233.
In the wake of Omicron cases being detected in a few places in the country, the Union health ministry on Wednesday wrote to states and union territories, stating that patients of the new coronavirus variant have to be treated in designated COVID facilities with separate isolation area.
A 31-year-old man from Kannur in Kerala tested positive for monkeypox on Monday, making it the second confirmed case of the disease in India, a Union health ministry official said.
President Xi, who attended a meeting in Beijing to double efforts in coordinating the prevention and control of the COVID-19 outbreak, said the epidemic 'has the fastest transmission, widest range of infection and has been the most difficult to prevent and control'.
A total of 2,969 flight cancellations and 11,512 flight delays worldwide on Tuesday, with 1,172 of the cancellations and 5,458 of the delays occurring within, into, or out of the US, according to the flight-tracking website FlightAware.
They agreed to continue technical exchanges to help end the epidemic worldwide as soon as possible, it said.
Amid the fear of a possible third wave of COVID-19 pandemic as the country gradually eases restrictions, Neeraj Nischal, Assistant Professor Department of Medicine at All India Institute of Medical Sciences on Sunday said that human behaviour is one of the factors which will determine Covid waves.
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.
If you have a fever and symptoms of a UTI, or if your symptoms persist despite treatment, you should see a doctor.
Consuming contaminated food or water can lead to this infection.
The Chinese government on Saturday ordered the release of people detained over a host of coronavirus-related incidents, a day ahead of Beijing's plan to scrap its three-year-old stringently implemented zero-Covid policy.
Noting that the virus tends to be more fatal for those whose immunity levels are low, a senior ministry of external affairs official said the deceased, an elderly person, belonged to the vulnerable age group and had health-related complications.
The country's National Health Commission in its daily update said it received reports of 52 deaths, all from Hubei, and 406 new confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus infection from all over the country.
The Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation has granted restricted emergency use authorisation to two new vaccines and a drug for COVID-19, taking the number of preventives and treatments available in India to 12.
Xi, also the general secretary of the ruling Communist Party of China, arrived in Wuhan, the epicentre of the virus outbreak, on Tuesday for an inspection of the epidemic prevention and control work in Hubei province and its capital city Wuhan, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
Amid increasing cases of monkeypox being reported in non-endemic countries, the government on Tuesday issued guidelines directing district surveillance units to consider even one such case as an outbreak and initiating a detailed investigation through the Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme.
Do not lose crucial time to begin treatment for Mucormycosis, insists Dr Sanket Jain, consultant pulmonologist, Masina Hospital, Mumbai.
The results were the same in seniors, with a median age of 76, and caregivers, with a median age of 48, and old alike, according to the researchers.
The Wuhan local administration earlier announced that people who are not quarantined and seeking special treatment or stranded in the city can leave in batches.
The US's national public health institute, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, had in early May incorporated "a new loss of taste or smell" in the list of COVID-19 symptoms.
The decline in the effectiveness of Covaxin, India's indigenous COVID-19 vaccine, from 77.8 per cent to 50 per cent during a Delta-driven case surge in April and May this year is neither bad nor surprising, say scientists.
'At the same time, if we are a little careless, we will run into trouble. No doubt about that.'
Out of the 12 deaths reported in the last 24 hours some are related to the Tablighi Jamaat congregation, Joint Secretary in the Health Ministry Lav Agarwal said in a daily media briefing.
The first cycle starts with 1, then 2, then 4, 8, etc, until the infected population jumps to 16,384 at the 14th cycle, explains Devangshu Dutta.
Commercial launch and supply to major government and private hospitals is expected in mid-June.
After the Onam festivities, medical experts had predicted that the TPR would go beyond 20 per cent and that the number of infections would rise further.
Stressing that the Covid virus may continue to transmit for a "very long time", senior WHO official Poonam Khetrapal Singh says the level of immunity in a community, through vaccination and previous infection, will determine whether it will become endemic in the long run.
One may be at a risk of heart attack or stroke even months after recovery, cautionss Dr Ruchit Shah, interventional cardiologist, Masina Hospital, Mumbai.
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