Two cases of the new Omicron variant of coronavirus have been detected in Karnataka, the Union government said on Thursday while asking people not to panic but follow Covid-appropriate behaviour and get vaccinated without delay.
Wimbledon's cancellation due to the COVID-19 pandemic this year will have no major financial impact on British tennis, outgoing All England club Chief Executive Richard Lewis said. The grasscourt Grand Slam was scheduled to start on Monday but was cancelled for the first time since World War Two in April.
The experts said there is a need to relook at the testing strategy in a way that it results in guiding the public health response and effectively limiting the spread of the disease.
"The Indian Medical Association has requested all its 3.5 lakh members in 1,800 local branches to voluntarily come out to get vaccinated first to show the world that these vaccines are safe and efficacious," it said.
In its daily situation report, the WHO said there is no evidence that the BCG vaccine protects people against COVID-19.
A study by researchers from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay found that a droplet remains liquid for a much shorter time on a porous surface, making it less favourable to the survival of the virus.
Iconic boxer MC Mary Kom and ace archer Deepika Kumari were told they need not say sorry after returning without medals while hockey player P R Sreejesh was asked by Prime Minister Narendra Modi if he has learnt Punjabi when he hosted the Tokyo-returned Olympians at his residence.
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 prioritisation of groups for COVID-19 vaccine shall be based on two key considerations -- occupational hazard and risk of exposure to infection, and the risk of developing severe disease and increased mortality'
The reduced severity of Omicron is good news for now, but it is the result of an "evolutionary mistake" as Covid-19 is transmitting very efficiently and there is no reason for it to become milder, indicating that the next variant could be more virulent, a leading Indian-origin scientist from the University of Cambridge has warned.
'If you delay the diagnosis even by 24 hours, in that 24 hours individuals would have affected more people.' 'So, contact tracing, testing, isolation, quarantine needs to continue.'
Maritime resources will be key to sustained growth and development of nations across the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) in the ongoing century, he said delivering his keynote address at the IOR Defence Ministers' Conclave held on the margins of Aero India-2021, India's premier defence and aerospace show.
Once the UK drug regulator gives its approval to the Oxford vaccine, the expert committee on COVID-19 at the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO) will hold its meeting and thoroughly review the safety and immunogenicity data from the clinical evaluations conducted abroad and in India before granting any emergency authorisation for the vaccine here, official sources 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 rate of transmission of COVID-19 in Hong Kong was 0.7 -- anything below 1 suggests the epidemic is receding.' 'The city-State achieved this without the de facto police-State curfew that India has resorted to,' says Rahul Jacob.
A combination of robust vaccination programmes and strict physical distancing rules may be enough to prevent recurring peaks of COVID-19 without greatly restricting the mobility of people, according to a modelling study.
The government on Wednesday issued new guidelines for international arrivals amid the spread of mutant variants of coronavirus in many countries.
Bharat Biotech, Serum Institute, Zydus Cadila, Panacea Biotec, Indian Immunologicals, Mynvax and Biological E are among the domestic pharma firms working on the coronavirus vaccines in India.
Satish Kumar Bhat, 47 from Delhi shared some suggestions that he feels may help fight coronavirus.
The Panama registered tanker New Diamond was carrying 270,000 metric tonnes of crude oil from Kuwait to India when its engine room caught fire off the coast of Sangamankanda in the eastern district of Ampara, Sri Lankan Navy spokesman Capt Indika Silva said.
Many companies globally are working on plasma research to develop and manufacture hyperimmune globulin therapies from plasma donations.
Evidence indicates that restoration of functioning of the education system as it was in pre-Covid times, as early as possible appears prudent in the current Indian context, they said.
For the first time in Tamil Nadu, a lion has died of coronavirus while nine others in the pride have tested positive for the infection at a zoo near Chennai, an official said.
The reality is, the worldwide toll could have been checked within time if China had been more transparent and had warned countries regarding the new strain of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS)-like infection, which originated at a 'wet market' in its province of Hubei late last year.
The B.1.617 variant was first detected in India and was divided in three lineages -- B.1.617.1, B.1.617.2 and B.1.617.3.
'We believe that India is capable of producing the Gamaleya vaccine and it is very important to say that those partnerships to produce the vaccine will enable us to cover the demand that we have'
Khan, 67, agreed for the test after Faisal Edhi, the son of late philanthropist Abdul Sattar Edhi and chairman of the Edhi Foundation, who met him last week tested positive for the coronavirus.
'There are only two bottlenecks for universal vaccination.' 'One, is availability of the vaccine.' 'Two, is the logistics for administering the vaccine.'
Named after 'Feluda', the detective character in legendary filmmaker Satyajit Ray's stories, the test has been developed by Debojyoti Chakraborty and Souvik Maiti as a simpler way of detecting SARS-coV2 presence in clinical samples, IGIB Director Anurag Agarwal said.
The disease could go down several paths. One possibility, the least likely, is that it will just disappear. The most likely is that it will have seasonal impact, says Devangshu Datta.
Calling vaccination an exercise in "preparedness and prevention", the vaccinologist said the immune response that is made has nothing to fight immediately but "we train the immune system to recognise the virus if and when it comes".
'Scientific data has proven that masks can reduce COVID-91 transmission by 53 per cent...A booster dose of vaccine, even if it works, is just a temporary fix'
"Pregnancy doesn't increase the risk of acquiring SARS-COV-2 infection but appears to worsen the clinical course as compared to non-pregnant women'
Asked what India did not do and China did right in restricting the number of cases, Paul said the principles that China adopted were exactly the same that India had adopted in terms of containment, social distancing and other non pharmacological measures.
A Swiss government agency has disclosed having come across suspicious money laundering activities related to cases of "organised crime" in India.
'What accounts for the huge difference in death tolls between the most advanced countries and the relatively poorer countries?' mulls Virendra Kapoor.
8 Asiatic lions in the zoo in have tested positive for COVID-19 after their saliva samples were thoroughly examined by CSIR-Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology in Hyderabad, Rakesh Mishra, advisor of the premier research institute said.
'India needs to do what India can do, which is to keep the number of cases down.' 'If it manages to keep the cases down, it will save lives.'
'People are just putting the mask below their nose.' 'They are only protecting the mouth, but not the nose.' 'People need to understand that it is the nose which has to be protected.'
The research on 1,276 patients from Wuhan, China, shows that around one in three people still experienced shortness of breath after 12 months, while lung impairments persisted in some patients, especially those who had experienced the most severe illness with Covid-19.
