While some experts believe that a large part of India is still vulnerable to the virus that could trigger a third wave, others feel the country is not likely to be engulfed by another deadly wave unless a new variant emerges.
One Chinese source informed ANI that 10 million new infections are probably occurring daily in China.
During a briefing on the COVID-19 situation, joint secretary in the ministry Lav Agarwal also said about 2.94 per cent of the active COVID-19 cases needed oxygen support, 3 per cent needed intensive care units (ICU) and 0.45 per cent required ventilator support.
Over 21 per cent of the population, aged 10 years and above, showed evidence of past exposure to COVID-19 in the Indian Council of Medical Research's latest national serosurvey, the government said on Thursday, noting that a large proportion of people are still vulnerable to the infection.
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.
Permanent Representative of Ukraine to the UN Ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya told the UN Security Council briefing on the humanitarian situation in Ukraine on Monday that "Ukraine deeply regrets that more than 2,000 citizens of India, China, Turkey, Pakistan and other countries suffer today along with Ukrainians from Russian aggression."
The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) on Friday said Modi will lead the Indian delegation at the summit. "The prime minister will lead the Indian delegation to the 20th summit of the SCO council of heads of state which will be held in the virtual format on Nov 10. The meeting will be chaired by Russian President Vladimir Putin," MEA Spokesperson Anurag Srivastava said.
The meeting will be attended by Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro, according to the MEA.
The Bharatiya Janata Party's victory in the assembly polls on Thursday has put the party on a stronger wicket for the election for the post of President expected later this year.
The country saw a reduction in the number of swine flu cases due to masks and sanitation practices.
Coming off a socio-economic crisis and the worst turmoil in its country's history, the Sri Lankan cricket team would like to provide the island nation with an emotional catharsis by beating fancied Pakistan in the Asia Cup final in Dubai on Sunday.
"People's republics of Donbass approached Russia with a request for help. In connection therewith, I made the decision to hold a special military operation," Putin said in a special television address.
In a statement, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs expressed its condemnation and denunciation of the statements made by the BJP spokesperson, saying it insulted Prophet Muhammad.
It is learnt that the camp office in Lviv would be able to coordinate the evacuation of Indians to Poland and Hungary while the one at Chernivtsi would facilitate exit to Romania.
Leicestershire police said a 20-year-old man has been sentenced to 10 months in prison after he pleaded guilty to possession of an offensive weapon during clashes in the city.
Pulse oximeters, hand sanitisers, temperature check equipment and ambulances too will attract lower 5 per cent tax.
The Centre said the upsurge of COVID-19 cases is happening in cities and the Omicron variant is the predominant circulating strain.
Rejection of the three central agriculture laws is one of the three resolutions approved by the Maharashtra cabinet on Sunday which will be moved in the monsoon session of the state legislature beginning Monday, sources said.
Epidemiologists point out that if there is no second wave, it means that the number of infected has surpassed the uninfected, reports Ruchika Chitravanshi.
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.
While Modi had a party and an organisation that supported him, all Mulayam, a self-made man with no inheritance in politics, had was a set of (fairly flexible) beliefs.
On when vaccination for children could start as Zydus Cadila's Covid vaccine has been granted emergency use authorisation for those 12-year-old and above, he said children were not being inoculated against COVID-19 on a large scale anywhere in the world though it has been initiated in some countries in a limited manner.
India said perhaps the Permanent Representative of Pakistan is "not aware that Osama bin Laden was hiding in their own country in plain sight, and it is the US forces which got him inside Pakistan. Nor have they heard their Prime Minister refer to Osama bin Laden as a martyr."
'It will impact the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.'
The National Institute of Virology (NIV) in Pune under the ICMR has isolated the monkeypox virus from the clinical specimen of a patient, which can pave the way for development of diagnostic kits and vaccines against the disease, officials said on Wednesday.
'I would like to reassure the general populace that your government, both Centre and state and the city councils are working at an accelerated pace.'
A day after getting permission to raise its Unified Payments Interface (UPI) user base to 100 million, WhatsApp on Thursday said it has plans to make significant investments in 'payments on WhatsApp' across India, including India-first features and driving adoption. The company, however, did not share details of its plans. The Meta-owned messaging app got its first greenlight for its payments service from the National Payments Council of India (NPCI) in November 2020 with a cap of 20 million users. A year later, in November 2021, the limit was raised to 40 million users.
"The external affairs minister will be visiting Moscow to attend the SCO Council of Foreign Ministers' meeting which is scheduled on September 10," spokesperson in the Ministry of External Affairs Anurag Srivstava said at an online media briefing.
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.
In a letter to states and UTs on Monday, Additional Secretary in the Union Health Ministry Arti Ahuja advised them to pay attention to this aspect immediately and increase the testing in a strategic manner keeping in view the trend of case positivity in specific areas.
The ministry also said about 14 most affected countries with a cumulative population almost equal to that of India have reported 55.2 times more COVID-19 deaths and 22.5 times more cases.
Nearly half of all coronavirus patients in the country have been cured, taking the recovery rate to over 48 per cent.
From 3.38 per cent in April, the fatality rate in the country has come down to 2.87 per cent as against 6.4 per cent globally.
The ministry said the country has a robust system of reporting deaths, including those caused by COVID-19, and the data is compiled regularly at different levels of governance, starting from the gram panchayat level to the district level and the state level.
Director of the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) Dr Sujeet Kumar Singh said the remaining 77 per cent are still vulnerable to the viral disease and containment measures need to continue with the same rigour.
Droupadi Murmu scripted history on Thursday by becoming India's first tribal President in the one-sided contest, defeating Opposition candidate Yashwant Sinha.
The party has said resources should now be focussed on curbing the COVID-19 crisis and tackling floods in the state and not holding the polls.
A key suspect and his accomplice accused of fanning communal hatred on social media and instigating the recent violence against the minority Hindu community in Bangladesh have confessed to their crime in a pre-trial hearing, a court official has said.
The new cabinet, predictably, has a sizeable number of Yadavs and Muslims, though members of other sections of the society also find a place.
The first part of the study conducted by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) revealed that 0.73 per cent of the population surveyed showed evidence of past exposure to SARS-CoV-2, and that urban slum population was the most vulnerable to the infection, ICMR Director General Balram Bhargava said at a press conference.
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