'Other countries go out on a limb to save even a single life.' 'What to talk of civilian accidents and disasters, even our military does not have a priority for Combat Search and Rescue,' says Group Captain P I Muralidharan (retd).
The government on Wednesday issued new guidelines for international arrivals amid the spread of mutant variants of coronavirus in many countries.
He was the first to report about the virus way back in December last year when it first emerged in Wuhan, the provincial capital of China's central Hubei province.
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".
In its daily situation report, the WHO said there is no evidence that the BCG vaccine protects people against COVID-19.
"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'
'There are only two bottlenecks for universal vaccination.' 'One, is availability of the vaccine.' 'Two, is the logistics for administering the vaccine.'
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 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.
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.
'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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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'
'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.'
However, Covid infection can spread faster during the third wave if any new virulent variant of SARS-CoV-2 emerges, said Manindra Agarwal who is working with the Sutra Model -- the mathematical projection of the COVID-19 trajectory.
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.
Mohabbat Singh was administered a cocktail of Casirivimab and Imdevimab at the Medanta Hospital as part of the "single dose infusion-based treatment" on Tuesday and then kept under observation.
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.
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.
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.
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.
According to a top DoT official, there have been random checks at different factories of different handset makers and respective teams have submitted their reports.
'What accounts for the huge difference in death tolls between the most advanced countries and the relatively poorer countries?' mulls Virendra Kapoor.
"Keeping a close pace with the potential availability of vaccine, a plan of action on which sections are to be given priority has been discussed. Importantly, it would be monitored through a scientific approach," Dr Harsh Vardhan told ANI about the strategy being discussed on vaccine distribution.
Neutralising antibodies are important in potentially protecting a person from re-infection of the same virus.
The Reproduction number or Rt refers to how many people an infected person infects on average. In other words, it can tell how efficiently a virus is spreading.
It said clinical trials of the drug 2-deoxy-D-glucose (2-DG) showed that it helps in faster recovery of hospitalised patients and reduces supplemental oxygen dependence.
There is so far no evidence that the second wave of COVID-19 in the country is due to variants of the virus, but it is possible, said noted virologist Shahid Jameel.
China still faces an enormous challenge with a lack of immunity among a majority of Chinese, Dr Zhong Nanshan said.
'Great social change brings great linguistic change, and that has never been truer than in this current global crisis.'
'Forcing the development of an indigenous vaccine as a cure for COVID-19, bypassing all health & safety norms, to be announced by PM Modi on Independence Day is fraught with horrendous human costs'
'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.'
A notice issued to the foreign journalists on Wednesday said they can get the Inactivated SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine, developed by Sinopharm's China National Biotec Group. Sinopharm's COVID-19 vaccine has been granted conditional market approval by China's National Medical Products Administration.
Commercial launch and supply to major government and private hospitals is expected in mid-June.
Meticulous hand washing is your best bet to get rid of the grime that clings to the hand, that might harbour nasty pathogens, including the coronavirus.
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