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.
Zhang Wenhong, who heads the Covid-19 clinical expert team in Shanghai and leads the infectious disease department at one of the eastern metropolitan city's top hospitals, expects that in the long term, countries will have to take a flexible approach to recurring outbreaks.
The arrival of summer in India may have raised hopes that hot and humid weather could slow the COVID-19 progression but virologist Naga Suresh Veerapu believes that outbreak and pandemic occurrences often do not follow seasonality.
According to the chargesheets, all the foreign nationals have been booked for violating visa rules, violating government guidelines issued in the wake of Covid-19 pandemic and regulations regarding Epidemic diseases Act, Disaster Management Act and prohibitory orders under section 144 of Code of Criminal Procedure.
The test - called the Truenat Beta CoV test - effectively enables same-day testing, reporting, and patient isolation initiation.
A day after Gujarat recorded its highest one-day surge of 17,119 new cases, five eminent doctors who are members of the task force spoke to the media.
The vaccination drive was only one important part of India's globally recognised pandemic management and response strategy, observes Dr Vinod K Paul.
A fracture of interstate relations could be India's biggest risk coming out of the pandemic. This topped a list of critical risks for India over the next two years, according to Geneva-based World Economic Forum's Executive Opinion Survey (EOS), whose results were released on Tuesday. Other top risks include a debt crisis in large economies, widespread youth disillusionment, failure of technology governance and digital inequality.
According to the study, published in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, places that take longer to implement social distancing measures may spend more time with the virus rapidly spreading than those that act more quickly.
Drawing inspiration from the recent performance of the Indian cricket team in Australia under trying circumstances, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Monday asserted that India is well-poised to truly be the land of promise and hope in the post-COVID-19 world.
In a breakthrough, an Indian-American scientist at the prestigious MIT has developed a simple, cheap, paper test that could improve cancer diagnosis rates and help people get treated earlier.
The ministry of home affairs gave in detail the steps taken by the Delhi Police which is making all efforts to complete the investigation within the time frame to submit the charge sheet in the trial court.
He also highlighted that the number of active COVID-19 cases in the country are less than 7 lakh and the doubling rate has increased to 97.2 days.
Decision on spectators by March, says Tokyo Olympics OC.
'If this trend continues, humans in the future will not be able to have normal pregnancy and childbirth.'
'Super-spreaders' are the infectious disease carriers who could transmit the pathogen to a large number of people.
Early data from its vaccine candidate 'mRNA-1273' showed it produced protective antibodies in a group of eight healthy volunteers, Moderna said. The other closely watched COVID-19 vaccine is the one being developed by scientists at Oxford University.
Biden previously told Jake Tapper of CNN that he would be "happy to" take the COVID-19 vaccine once US infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci said it was safe and he would get the injection in a public setting to prove it.
'Serial testing is much more valuable than a single test which reflects just a point in time.'
The new and highly transmissible Omicron variant of the deadly coronavirus has increased immune escape compared with the Delta variant and appears likely to become the dominant SARS-CoV-2 strain globally in 2022, according to Singapore-based experts.
'The challenge will be making sure its efficacy is high.' 'If a vaccine is only 50 to 60 per cent efficient, it's a double-edged sword.'
A creche facility for the children of judicial officers and staff at the Rohini district court complex in New Delhi has run into controversy for issuing a fiat that the kids of non-judicial members would be allowed only if they were "neat and clean" and "free from disease".
'In spite of all the sermonising from the political class, when they come in public, the ministers don't follow their own rules.' 'They don't mask.' 'If you look at the West Bengal election campaigning, if you look at the Assam election campaigning or if you look at Kerala election campaigning, they are not setting an example.'
'The virus is constantly, constantly making mistakes when it replicates.' 'When the virus has accumulated enough mistakes, then it becomes now a variant and it behaves differently.'
The Kerala Assembly on Wednesday unanimously passed a resolution demanding that the Centre provide COVID-19 vaccines free of cost to all states, even as the ruling and opposition members clashed over the COVID-19 fatality numbers in the state.
The death of a 11-year-old boy due to 'bird-flu', even before the devastating effects of the second Covid wave have waned, has alarmed the medical fraternity though they assert that human-to-human transmission of H5N1 virus is extremely rare. The event has also put the Rs 90,000 crore domestic poultry industry which was seeing some uptick in demand after months of low sales last year into a spot of bother, as any curb on sale or production of eggs or chicken could have a devastating impact on its revenues. It is estimated that around 60 million people are directly impacted by the poultry sector in India. H5N1 virus, also commonly known as bird flu, is known to spread from chickens but other birds such as ducks and crow are also carriers of the virus.
French scientists have revived a 48,500-year-old zombie virus buried under a frozen lake in Russia until now!
A joint venture of Synbiotics, a wholly owned subsidiary of Ambalal Sarabhai Enterprises (ASE), and CoDiagnostics, CoSara Diagnostics is the first and only Indian company so far to receive a licence from the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO) to manufacture coronavirus diagnostic test kits.
'The steady poverty reduction achieved over the last three decades could be largely reversed in this one financial year with hundreds of millions sliding below the red line,' warns Devangshu Datta.
OSD in the health ministry Rajesh Bhushan said that herd immunity is a kind of indirect protection from an infectious disease like COVID-19. It happens only when a population becomes immune either through vaccination or immunity is developed through a previous infection, he said.
'If we cannot handle an epidemic of that strata, (causing that kind) of excessive calamity, then we really have to prevent it.' 'If we become complacent in even preventing it, then we are in for a disaster.'
The efficacy of the vaccine, developed by the Gamalaya Centre, was demonstrated on the basis of a first interim analysis obtained 21 days after the first injection.
The study also shows that levels of these antibodies that are able to recognise and fight the virus are lower with increasing age, and that levels decline over time, providing additional evidence in support of plans to deliver a booster dose to vulnerable people.
'It is safe to consume cooked non-vegetarian food.'
'All the vaccines that are available in most countries, right now, are all highly effective and safe.'
A 24-hour control room was set up in the neighbouring district of Wayanad following the Nipah outbreak in Kozhikode
"To make sure there isn't a Covid surge in the country, PM Modi has asked us to be careful. The government is also preparing if at the Covid cases increase. Today, mock drills are conducted across Covid hospitals in the country to make sure people get proper treatment," Mandaviya said.
The phase 3 trial is being implemented as part of Operation Warp Speed, a multi-agency collaboration led by the US Health and Human Services, which aims at accelerating the development and manufacturing of medical countermeasures for COVID-19 and delivering 300 million doses of an effective vaccine by January 2021.
Jayalalithaa was admitted to Apollo Hospital on September 22.
"Confidence in the vaccine is what brings us here this morning," the US vice-president said in remarks following his vaccination. "I didn't feel a thing. Well done."
