The Gam-COVID-Vac, called Sputnik V, is a two-part vaccine that includes two adenovirus vectors -- recombinant human adenovirus type 26 (rAd26-S) and recombinant human adenovirus type 5 (rAd5-S).
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.
What's Karishma's new passion? Why is Janhvi exhausted?
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.
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 committee has given its recommendations to Congress president Sonia Gandhi, who will take necessary action, the sources pointed out.
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 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.
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.
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.
Kids mostly have mild illnesses and recover with just symptomatic treatment.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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 trial began at the Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute in Seattle as the first participant received the investigational vaccine.
'Just put a patch on your arm and the vaccine can be absorbed by the body.'
According to these experts, a monkeypox outbreak can effectively be tackled by strong surveillance.
The paper also includes musing that SARS -- which hit China in 2003 -- could have been a man-made bioweapon deliberately unleashed by "terrorists".
'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.'
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.
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.
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.
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.
... '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.'
The US-led war against Iraq and the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome have led to sharp decline in demand for air travel and raised costs on account of aviation turbine fuel, the Lok Sabha was informed on Monday.
© 2026 Rediff.com - Advertise with us - Disclaimer - Privacy Policy - Sitemap - Feedback - About us - Terms of use - Grievances