Instead of killing bat cells as the virus does with human cells, the MERS coronavirus enters a long-term relationship with the host, maintained by the bat's unique 'super' immune system
The countrywide vaccination drive was rolled out on January 16 with healthcare workers getting inoculated and vaccination of the frontline workers started from February 2.
The ministry said the mutated UK strain was detected in eight samples at the National Centre for Disease Control, one at the National Institute of Biomedical Genomics, Kalyani (near Kolkata), one at the National Institute of Virology Pune, seven at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro-Sciences Hospital Bengaluru, two at the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology in Hyderabad and one at the Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology, Delhi.
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There is no change in treatment guidelines due to this mutation and the vaccines that are being developed, particularly those in the country, will not be impacted, NITI Aayog member (health) Dr V K Paul said.
This test uses an indigenously developed, cutting-edge CRISPR technology for detection of the genomic sequence of SARS-CoV-2 virus, CSIR said in a statement.
"A recent risk assessment of the situation in India conducted by WHO found that resurgence and acceleration of COVID-19 transmission in India had several potential contributing factors, including increase in the proportion of cases of SARS-CoV-2 variants with potentially increased transmissibility; several religious and political mass gathering events which increased social mixing; and, under use of and reduced adherence to public health and social measures. The exact contributions of these each of these factors on increased transmission in India are not well understood," it said.
'Some of the longer-term implications of COVID-19 are not related to the virus itself.' 'They are actually related to immune responses from the virus.'
The presence of spike protein facilitates a virus' entry into the host cell and is responsible for making it transmissible and causing infection.
The committee has given its recommendations to Congress president Sonia Gandhi, who will take necessary action, the sources pointed out.
All these people have been kept in single room isolation in designated healthcare facilities by respective state governments and their close contacts have also been put under quarantine, the ministry said.
The yet-to-be peer-reviewed findings, recently posted on the preprint repository BioRxiv, show that the BA.2 sub variant may have features that make it as capable of causing serious illness as older coronavirus variants.
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.
A team at Bristol University used recently developed techniques to validate that the vaccine accurately follows the genetic instructions programmed into it by the Oxford University team.
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 study by a group of doctors showed that after two shots of the vaccines, 98 per cent recipients of Covishield showed antibody response, while the same was 80 per cent among Covaxin recipients. Sohini Das and Ruchika Chitravanshi report.
Kids mostly have mild illnesses and recover with just symptomatic treatment.
The rapid surge in cases during Delhi's fourth COVID-19 wave was mainly driven by the Delta variant, which likely has immune-evasion properties and counted for 60 per cent of the cases in April, according to a new study.
After having received the government purchase order for 55 lakh doses, Bharat Biotech shipped the first batch of vaccines (each vial containing 20 doses) to Gannavaram (Vijayawada), Guwahati, Patna, Delhi, Kurukshetra, Bangalore, Pune, Bhubaneswar, Jaipur, Chennai and Lucknow.
Three Paris St Germain players have tested positive for COVID-19, the Ligue 1 club said on Wednesday without revealing their identities.
The pandemic will be over but Covid will be here to stay, the scientists said as Covid numbers begin to ebb in several parts of the world, including India.
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.
All the people who have tested positive for the new variant of the virus were kept in single-room isolation at designated healthcare facilities by the respective state governments, the ministry had earlier said.
Of the 230 samples from Mumbai, 228 samples are of Omicron variant, while one was found to be Kappa variant and another XE variant. The condition of the patients infected with the new strains of the virus was not serious, a BMC official said.
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.
Nasal droplets fall within 2 metres from a COVID-19 infected person and the aerosols can travel in air up to 10 metres, the Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser said on Thursday, adding that proper ventilation can decrease the risk of transmission.
'Just put a patch on your arm and the vaccine can be absorbed by the body.'
In response to a question on whether younger population were getting more affected, Indian Council of Medical Research Director General Dr Balram Bhargava said the comparison of data during the first and the second wave of COVID-19 has shown that there is not much age difference.
The results show they induced strong antibody and T-cell immune responses for up to 56 days after they were given. T-cells are crucial for maintaining protection against the virus for years.
According to these experts, a monkeypox outbreak can effectively be tackled by strong surveillance.
The trial began at the Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute in Seattle as the first participant received the investigational vaccine.
An ONGC helicopter carrying nine persons including two pilots, on Tuesday fell into the sea while attempting to land on a company's rig in the Arabian Sea, the company said, adding that six persons have so far been rescued.
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.
The paper also includes musing that SARS -- which hit China in 2003 -- could have been a man-made bioweapon deliberately unleashed by "terrorists".
These 51 cases were detected from over 45,000 samples sequenced so far in the country.
Vaccines Covishield and Covaxin work against SARS-CoV-2 variants Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta, while effectiveness tests against the Delta Plus variant is ongoing, the government said.
'Wastewater containing excreted material can tell us how a community is doing in a particular area pertaining to any epidemic, pandemic, and other bacterial and viral diseases.'
... 'Or any country which has reasonable vaccine coverage.' 'The emergence of Omicron clearly proves that if we allow a virus to circulate in an unvaccinated population, it would take a form which could be a Variant of Concern, or a new variant.'
Xiaotangshan Hospital in Beijing, which was used in 2003 to quarantine SARS patients, cleared all COVID-19 cases on Tuesday and is scheduled to cease operation on Wednesday, official media reported.
It was on January 30, 2020 when a third-year medical student from Wuhan university tested positive for coronavirus, becoming the country's first COVID-19 patient, days after she had returned home following semester holidays.
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