22 cases of the Delta Plus variant of the coronavirus have been detected in India, with 16 of them being reported from Maharashtra and the remaining from Madhya Pradesh and Kerala, the government said.
The mask can potentially be worn longer, causing less plastic waste as it does not need to be replaced as frequently, the researchers said.
The new vaccine candidate, DIOS-CoVax2, uses banks of genetic sequences of all known coronaviruses, including those from bats, believed to be the natural hosts of many relatives of human coronaviruses.
The announcement comes a day after the Subject Expert Committee (SEC) on COVID-19 of the CDSCO recommended granting emergency use authorisation (EUA) to the COVID-19 vaccines Covovax and Corbevax with certain conditions.
The reason is that because of the hybrid immunity after three waves of natural infection and a large proportion of adults receiving both doses of COVID-19 vaccine, the susceptible pool has come down drastically, Lahariya said.
According to the scientists, sewage leaking into natural watercourses might lead to infection with the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 via airborne spray.
The study will provide information about the spread of the infection and also throw light on herd immunity.
An expert panel of India's central drug authority on Wednesday recommended granting regular market approval to COVID vaccines Covishield and Covaxin for use in adult population subject to certain conditions, official sources said.
Nobel laureate Peter Doherty says his 'big worry' is there could be refusals for other vaccines if doubts over its safety turn out to be true.
Omicron is a 'deviant' from the COVID-19 pandemic progression script and so it must be postulated that two pandemics are going on side by side, one by the Delta and close relatives and the other by the latest variant of concern, said noted virologist Dr T Jacob John.
The Kraken COVID-19 variant accounts for almost 41 per cent of all Covid infections.
COVAXIN, developed by Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech in collaboration with Indian Council of Medical Research and National Institute of Virology, has got the nod for human clinical trials from the Drug Controller General of India
The most important finding of the study was that the Spike-protein neutralising antibodies found in the mixed vaccine groups were significantly higher than the same-vaccine groups, D Nageshwar Reddy, Chairman of AIG Hospitals said.
Since the trial participants were not exposed to the coronavirus after vaccination, the scientists said it is not possible for the current study to determine the efficacy of the candidate vaccine.
Tope, however, stressed that there was no need to panic as the count of active cases in the state still stood below 1,000, while the number of cases per million in the state was far less than other states.
While bats are the ancestral hosts to many deadly viruses affecting humans such as Ebola, rabies, and the novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, the flying mammals themselves tolerate these pathogens without ill effects
Delhi's R-value, which indicates the spread of COVID-19, was recorded at 2.1 this week, implying that every infected person is infecting two others in the national capital, according to an analysis by IIT-Madras.
"The compensation for serious adverse event will be paid by sponsor (BBIL) in case if the SAE is proven to be causally related to the vaccine," the consent form said.
"Lockdown and containment (measures) have been successful in keeping it low and preventing rapid spread," ICMR Director General Balram Bhargava said, citing the sero-survey on COVID-19 spread.
The World Health Organisation has issued warning against XE, a new variant of Omicron first detected in the UK.
The presence of spike protein facilitates a virus' entry into the host cell and is responsible for making it transmissible and causing infection.
In its daily situation report, the WHO said there is no evidence that the BCG vaccine protects people against COVID-19.
As of July 13, at least 111 countries, territories and areas have reported detection of the Delta variant, and this is expected to continue to increase, becoming the dominant variant globally in the coming months.
The Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine is also being produced as part of a tie-up by the Serum Institute of India.
'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'
'Social distancing, wearing masks and hygiene should be practised more strictly.'' 'People should not assemble in close spaces as the micro droplets may hang in the air and can last for a longer time.'
The diagnostic test kit developed by the Thiruvananthapuram institute can detect coronavirus in 10 minutes, and the sample to result time will be less than two hours, Vardhan tweeted. A total of 30 samples can be tested in a single batch on a single machine, he said.
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 researchers, working in an 'unprecedented' vaccine development effort to prevent COVID-19, said they have started screening healthy volunteers (aged 18-55) from Friday for their upcoming trial in the Thames Valley Region of England.
The states were requested to take a stock of hospital preparedness such as availability of drugs and medical oxygen, vaccination coverage against COVID-19 and influenza.
Researchers at McGill University in Canada carried out a survey of 28 experts working in vaccinology in late June 2020. The majority of those surveyed were mostly Canadian or American academics with an average of 25 years of experience working in the field.
According to the NCDC, 415 cases of the UK strain of coronavirus were found in genomes sequenced in Delhi, followed by 23 cases of the South African strain.
The COVID-19 patients at high risk of hospitalisation or those with severe disease should be given a combination of two antibody treatments, according to latest World Health Organization guidelines published in The BMJ on Friday.
Three researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology sought hospital care in November 2019, weeks before Beijing disclosed the COVID-19 pandemic, a United States media report said, citing a previously undisclosed American intelligence document that could add weight to growing calls for a full scale probe of whether the coronavirus may have escaped from China's top bio lab.
A number of Indian medical experts on Monday supported calls from an eminent British Indian cardiologist for a full safety review into the use of Oxford/AstraZeneca's Covid-19 vaccine, administered in India as Covishield, over feared serious side effects such as heart attack and stroke.
The Tamil Nadu government on Sunday said it was mandatory for people coming from Kerala, to the state to carry a negative RT-PCR test report or vaccination certificate of two COVID doses from August 5, in the wake of a spike in infections in the neighbouring state.
With Omicron, the new variant of SARS-CoV2, the third wave of coronavirus could hit the peak by February with cases likely to be reaching up to 1-1.5 lakh a day in the country, but it will be milder than the second wave, Manindra Agarwal, IIT scientist involved in the mathematical projection of trajectory of COVID-19, said.
All these persons have been kept in single room isolation at designated health care facilities by respective state governments and their close contacts have also been put under quarantine, the ministry said.
Noting that various mathematical models meant for predicting coronavirus waves have repeatedly failed to give reliable results due to a small sample size, the Centre on Tuesday said it is closely following the virus trajectory globally, given the emergence of its new variants.
Noting that the third wave of Covid-19 has ended in India, eminent virologist Dr T Jacob John said he is "fairly confident" that no fourth wave will occur in the country unless an unexpected variant that behaves differently comes up.
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