'The risks for injury and mortality will be increasing, and these risks are factored into the reintroduction plan'
The South African Health Products Authority (SAHPRA) on Wednesday approved the use of Pfizer's Comirnaty COVID-19 vaccine after BioNTech and Pfizer announced that two doses of their vaccine may not be enough to protect against the Omicron variant.
BCCI treasurer Arun Dhumal on Tuesday said India's tour of South Africa remains on schedule provided the situation doesn't aggravate in the rainbow nation after a new COVID-19 variant was detected there.
South Africa's foreign ministry has said that a 'full bio-secure environment' will be created for the Indian cricket team when it lands in Johannesburg for a highly-anticipated series next month
Even by conservative assumptions that 5 to 10 per cent of infected individuals develop long Covid, India today may be home to 50 to 100 million infected individuals -- many silently coping with breathlessness, fatigue, palpitations, brain fog, or unexplained clotting tendencies.
On his 200th birth anniversary, Utkarsh Mishra traces the life, thought, and legacy of Dadabhai Naoroji, the Grand Old Man of India.
India's mango exports to the US are registering healthy growth, and irradiation operations at a key mango treatment facility in Mumbai have been normalised after a brief disruption due to a data recording error earlier this month, an official said on Tuesday. The Mumbai-based irradiation facility, which handles the highest volume of mangoes destined for the US, faced an issue during the irradiation process conducted on May 8 and 9, 2025.
The Madhya Pradesh forest department has refused to provide information under the Right to Information Act on management of cheetahs brought from Africa and their cubs born in India.
After three cheetahs died in just over a month last year in Madhya Pradesh's Kuno National Park, the National Tiger Conservation Authority in May 2023 called in experts from Reliance's wildlife facility in Gujarat to review health monitoring protocols, official records show.
While India has become the largest data generating nation, and hosts more than 152 data centres, it is fed by only 18 undersea cables.
'Not disclosing information to the public indicates that there is something wrong with Project Cheetah.'
The minister said he was not supposed to say anything officially as he was still in touch with the union health ministry and the ICMR officials.
South African experts have expressed concern about the rising number of COVID-19 infections among young children, even as the country recorded a further 16,055 infections and 25 deaths overnight on Friday.
The Indian Diaspora has been able to carve a niche in their adopted countries as a result of their talent, perseverance and hardworking nature, asserts Rup Narayan Das.
Cricket South Africa (CSA) and Koninklijke Nederlandse Cricket Bond (KNCB) have mutually agreed to defer the three-match ODI series which began on Friday.
A forest department official blamed the sweltering heat for the death of this cub's three siblings on Tuesday.
One more cheetah has died at the Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh, making it the sixth adult feline to have died since March, according to a statement from the Madhya Pradesh Forest Department on Wednesday.
Modi had released the first batch of eight eight spotted felines -- five females and three males -- from Namibia into a quarantine enclosure at Kuno on his 72nd birthday on September 17 last year.
The Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium is closely tracking the new variant of COVID-19 called B.1.1.529 and its presence has not been detected in the country yet, officials said on Friday.
Omicron has been detected in Maharashtra (20), Rajasthan (9), Karnataka (3), Gujarat (4), Kerala (1) and Andhra Pradesh (1) and Union Territories of Delhi (2) and Chandigarh (1).
The scare of communicable diseases seems to be gripping the country with Maharashtra reporting 28 Zika cases this year, the highest since 2021.
A formal signing of an agreement is holding up their inter-continental translocation, wildlife experts have said.
New strains of coronavirus found in the United Kingdom, South Africa and Brazil have not been detected in Amravati, Yavatmal and Satara districts of Maharashtra where cases have spiked recently, the state government said on Friday.
They include a woman who came from Nigeria along with her two daughters to meet her brother in adjoining Pimpri Chinchwad area, the official said.
The Omicron variant was first detected in India in Bengaluru with two people testing positive for it comprising a South African national of Indian origin and a doctor.
Experts said the strain has not propelled a surge in cases like Omicron, but advised strict adherence to COVID-19-appropriate behaviour.
It is a tribute to a system so robustly meritocratic that this team represents India's diversity better than any other institution: The Union Cabinet, our chief ministers, the civil services, the leadership of our armed forces and security agencies, the judiciary and more than all of these, our typical newsroom. That is the biggest message from this breathless rise of Indian cricket, asserts Shekhar Gupta.
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.
Foreign teams that will land in India for next month's FIH Men's Junior Hockey World Cup in Bhubaneswar have been exempted from quarantine and will only be required to monitor themselves for COVID-19 symptoms during the stay.
Most of those who tested positive either recently arrived from African countries or were in contact with such people.
India is struggling with a second wave of the pandemic with more than 3,00,000 daily new coronavirus cases being reported in the past few days, and hospitals are reeling under a shortage of medical oxygen and beds.
Asserting that it is for the first time that BRICS has taken a collective position on strengthening and reforming multilateral systems, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said, "We have to ensure that BRICS is more productive in the next 15 years".
Cases with the Omicron variant have already been detected in Karnataka and Gujarat.
The Centre has warned it is likely that the spread of the new variant will outpace the Delta variant where there is community transmission.
In a significant development, India is believed to have placed a funding request of around $55 million in its first call with the Pandemic Fund of the World Bank, sources said. The fund has been set up to finance critical investments in a bid to strengthen pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response capacities at national, regional, and global levels, with a focus on low- and middle-income countries. It was created in the aftermath of the Covid-19 global pandemic.
The rules affect UK residents and Irish nationals travelling from 33 countries on the so-called 'red list', which covers much of South America, southern Africa, the United Arab Emirates and Portugal as feared regions for new coronavirus mutations. Non-UK travellers from these locations are currently banned from entry anyway.
Eight new cases of the Omicron variant of coronavirus were reported in Maharashtra -- seven of them in Mumbai -- and none of the patients had a history of international travel, the state health department said on Tuesday.
The patient is currently admitted to the Lok Nayak Jai Prakash (LNJP) Hospital and has mild symptoms, hospital officials said.
Alert to the looming threat from the 'Omicron' variant, states began to re-tighten curbs and urgently trace people who arrived from abroad in the last one month while a demand to not allow flights from the affected countries was made by Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai.
Maharashtra reported seven new cases of the Omicron variant of coronavirus on Friday including a three-and-half-year-old girl which took the tally of such infections to 17, the state health department said.
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