The reshuffle had politics at its heart, so the biggest complement of new ministers, both Cabinet rank and below, came from UP, which will see assembly elections in a few months.
The apex court website showed that the issue would be taken up for hearing on February 10 by a bench headed by Chief Justice S A Bobde.
The Indian Council of Medical Research will start national-level sero surveys to assess the spread of Covid-19 and all states/Union territories should also be encouraged to conduct them so that information from all geographies can be collected, the Union health ministry said on Friday.
'There is no data to show this virus is more deadlier.'
With elections elsewhere in India showing that multi-pronged contests usually work to the BJP's favour, the party can gain if it hangs on stubbornly. In the meantime, any additional support helps. That is why the archbishop's comment attracted political traction in Kerala, observes Shyam G Menon.
The ministry further stated that it was advisable to receive a complete schedule of the anti-coronavirus vaccine irrespective of past history of infection with COVID-19 as this will help in developing a strong immune response against the disease.
Several companies and technology heavyweights including Microsoft, Oracle and Salesforce are working to create a digital vaccination passport or health passport app in the hope that governments and airlines will require travellers to upload details of their Covid-19 tests and immunisation. The vaccine passport will effectively create digital credentials that could be the key to attending crowded events or even visiting countries.
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.
Experts say herd immunity is said to have been developed in a population segment if at least 50-60 per cent of those are found to have the presence of antibodies in a sero-prevalence survey.
Whether the third wave will ravage us depends on the pace of vaccinations, careful and calibrated opening up of establishments, and a strategy to contain the spread in specific states or pockets.
The phase 3 trial findings indicate that Covaxin induces a robust antibody response with no severe vaccine-related adverse events or deaths reported among the trial participants, the authors of the study said.
The death toll due to the coronavirus infection rose to 7,466 and the cases mounted to 2,66,598 in the country.
From 2.82 per cent over a month earlier, India's COVID-19 case fatality rate declined to 2.72 per cent on July 10 and has further reduced to 2.49 per cent presently.
India's largest airline has also told its crew members -- who are working on flights connecting India with East Asian countries like Thailand and Singapore -- to wear N95 masks at all times when they are on ground.
Replying to the notice issued, the Central government said that ex-gratia amount cannot be paid due to financial constraints and other factors.
'Fearlessness, courtesy, humour, wide interests and wisdom, deep commitment to science and technology, passion for the environment, objectivity and the ability to see many things through not only a national but also an international prism.'
Talking about the Tablighi Jamaat congregation, Agarwal said, "If the Tablighi Jamaat incident had not taken place and we compare the rate of doubling -- that is in how many days the cases have doubled, we will see that currently it is 4.1 days (including Jamaat cases) and if the incident had not taken place and additional cases had not come then the doubling rate would have been 7.4 days."
Is the worst of the Covid crisis behind India? As cases dip three weeks after Diwali, the answer is a possible yes, say several experts, attributing the downslide to a large section of the population already exposed to the virus during the second wave and a stepped up vaccination campaign.
We need to give a booster shot to all our frontline workers first as if they fall victim to Omicron, the health system will collapse, points out Ramesh Menon.
Agarwal said that the current 'R0' or R naught for the coronavirus infection is somewhere between 1.5 and 4.
This was the sixth consecutive day when coronavirus cases increased by more than 14,000. Consequently, India has added 92,573 cases since June 20, and over 2.82 lakh this month alone since June 1.
The Union health minister said of the total active COVID-19 cases in the country, 1.5 per cent are on oxygen support and 2.34 per cent are in ICUs.
India is the third worst-hit nation by the pandemic after the US and Brazil in terms of cases and deaths.
The GoM was apprised that as of now, the death rate is around 3.1 per cent while the recovery rate is more than 20 per cent, which is comparatively better than most of the countries and may be taken as a positive effect of the lockdown in the country, along with the cluster management and containment strategy.
An independent Taiwan under President Tsai Ing-wen's Democratic Progressive Party is anathema to China, observes Rup Narayan Das.
The female tiger, named Nadia, is believed to be the first known case of an animal infected with COVID-19 in the US. It is suspected that she contracted the virus from a caretaker who was asymptomatic at that time.
Here's the full text of President's Ram Nath Kovind's address to the joint sitting of both houses of Parliament on the first of Budget Session 2022.
The death toll rose to 5,394 after a record single-day spike of 230 fatalities in the 24 hours since Sunday 8 am, the Union Health Ministry said in its morning update. It showed the number of confirmed cases rising by 8,392 to 1,90,535. However, a PTI tally of figures announced by states and union territories, as of 9.35 pm, showed a higher death toll of 5,501.
This was the fourth consecutive day that COVID-19 cases in the country have increased by more than 26,000.
'Most vaccines do target the Spike protein, in which there are changes in the variants but vaccines stimulate our immune system to produce a wide range of protective antibodies'
'The more people get tested, the more people will come under isolation. So the spread will get limited with testing.'
This apart, to further increase capacities, Bharat Biotech has partnered with Indian Immunologicals (IIL) to manufacture the drug substance for Covaxin. The technology transfer process is underway and IIL has the 'capabilities and expertise' to manufacture the inactivated viral vaccines at commercial scale.
Interestingly, India had objected to the establishment of a UNHCHR when it was proposed by the US at the Vienna Conference on Human Rights in July 1993 and the whole proposal was remitted to the General Assembly in New York because India and others said that the whole issue should be examined in detail, says Ambassador T P Sreenivasan, who had led the Indian delegation for negotiating the terms of the HCHR.
A day after the WHO declared emergency over the "explosive" spread of the mosquito-borne Zika virus, the Centre on Tuesday issued detailed guidelines for combating the disease, including a travel advisory that asks pregnant women to either defer or cancel their travel to the affected areas.
Having almost closed the last contours of the limited trade deal and with the announcement of a much larger trade deal in the offing, we have moved to a new level of engagement: Goyal.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday asked states to make full use of the expanded COVID-19 testing capacity and saving lives a top priority as India recorded the highest ever spike of 2,003 coronavirus deaths after Maharashtra and Delhi added earlier fatalities not attributed to the disease.
There are 907883 active cases of coronavirus infection in the country which comprises 13.44 per cent of the total caseload, the data stated.
Nadella's visit comes at a time when the Indian government is taking a strong position on issues like data localisation and tightening the rules for e-commerce companies as well as social media platforms.
The remarks come amid suspected cases of COVID-19 reinfection being reported from abroad and from Indian states like Telangana, Karnataka, Gujarat, Punjab and Maharashtra.
Exploiting the killings to ratchet up the tension in the region and harden negotiating positions with the central government serves nobody, least of all the people of Nagaland. The peace process must not be stalled because of this incident or distracted by calls to repeal the AFSPA, argues Vivek Gumaste.
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