The Serum Institute of India is the first Indian company to seek approval for the COVID-19 booster dose.
Dr Malhotra, who has demanded a full safety review into the use of AstraZeneca's Covid vaccine, told PTI Covishield "should never have been rolled out in the country in the first place".
The new report highlights how different parts of the intelligence community have arrived at disparate judgments about the pandemic's origin.
The Jharkhand government has asked health officials to remain on alert and arrange isolation beds in all district hospitals after a seven-year-old girl was detected with symptoms similar to monkeypox in Garhwa, an official said on Wednesday.
The WHO's move came nearly three weeks after India objected to the B.1.617 mutant of the novel coronavirus being termed an 'Indian Variant' in media reports with the Union Health Ministry pointing out that the UN's top health organ has not used the word 'Indian' for this strain in its document.
In the WHO South-East Asia region, four cases of monkeypox have been reported, three from India and one from Thailand.
Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray has instructed officials to take extra efforts to complete the administration of the second dose of anti-COVID-19 vaccines to all eligible people.
The Indian government asked for the estimates published '10 years later'.
Samples of the cough syrup have been taken from the manufacturing premises in Noida and sent to the Regional Drugs Testing Laboratory (RDTL) in Chandigarh for testing, Mandaviya said.
The weekly epidemiological update by WHO revealed the week of December 20-26 saw the global number of new COVID-19 cases increase by 11 per cent as compared to the previous week.
Mu -- also known by its scientific name as B.1.621 -- was first identified in Colombia in January 2021, and since then, there have been 'sporadic reports' of cases and some larger outbreaks in South America and Europe, the United Nations health agency said in its weekly bulletin on the pandemic on Tuesday.
Union Minister for Youth Affairs and Sports Anurag Thakur said the Board of Control for Cricket in India should consult the government before sending the cricket team to South Africa, where a new COVID-19 variant is causing havoc.
Their samples have been sent to the National Centre for Disease Control for genome sequencing to ascertain if they have the new variant, Omicron, which has been classified as 'variant of concern' by the WHO.
At present, no Omicron variant has been reported in India, Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya said.
Foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning went on the offensive saying "we do not believe the entry restriction measures some countries have taken against China are science-based".
Sri Lanka will ban entry to most travellers from six southern African countries from Sunday, after a potentially more contagious new coronavirus variant called Omicron was identified in South Africa earlier this week, healthcare authorities said in Colombo on Saturday.
XE, the latest mutant of Omicron may be more transmissible than the previous ones, the World Health Organization has said.
Xi said that China's extraordinary efforts have helped it prevail over unprecedented difficulties.
South Africa will remain on the lowest 'level 1' of its five-level lockdown strategy to fight the COVID-19 pandemic despite the global panic around the detection of the Omicron variant in the country, President Cyril Ramaphosa has announced .
"Even though the vaccine may not be able to provide absolute protection against different variants of virus, it can certainly reduce the risk of death and complications," a statement quoting WHO chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan said.
Apart from making efforts to meet the requirements of India, the company is also trying its best to balance the needs of the rest of the world, he added.
'The districts of Ludhiana and Shaheed Bhagat Singh Nagar have been selected for the dry run,' Punjab Health Minister Balbir Singh Sidhu said in an official statement.
"We have made the assessment that COVID-19 can be characterised as a pandemic," WHO DG Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said. "WHO's mandate is public health. But we are working with many partners across all sectors to mitigate the social and economic consequences of this COVID-19 pandemic," he added.
In the letter, Somani said the samples of four made-in-India cough syrups linked to the deaths of 66 children in Gambia which were tested in government laboratory here were found to be complying with specifications and not to have been contaminated with DEG or EG according to the test reports.
P V Sindhu urged everyone to make physical activity an integral part of their lives.
The Indian Medical Association on Monday expressed shock over the 'blatant lie of World Health Organisation certification' for Patanjali's Coronil tablet, which the company claims is an evidence-based medicine to fight COVID-19, and demanded an explanation from Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan in whose presence the medicine was launched.
A 22-year-old man, who recently returned to Kerala from the UAE, allegedly died due to monkeypox on Saturday.
The government on Friday said 25 cases of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus have been detected in India so far and that mostly mild symptoms have been noted in all the cases.
They said after examining and analysing the adverse event reports, causal relationship and all related details shared by or to be shared by the WHO, the committee will advise and recommend further course of action to the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI).
After the Antakshri Challenge, Bollywood stars have taken up the Safe Hands Challenge, launched by Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organisation.
One has to stay in isolation for 21 days from the last contact with a monkeypox patient or their contaminated materials, they said.
2020 hold immense importance in the world of sports with the Olympics set to take place in Tokyo, Japan in July and August. However, the coronavirus outbreak has had consequences and repercussions across the globe.
If two individuals in an indoor space are not wearing a mask, in just 10 minutes, the infected person can transmit the virus to the other person, while if both are wearing a fitted N-95 mask, it requires over 600 hours of exposure for transmission, he said.
Adar Poonawalla said he was hopeful that Covovax, the Novavax vaccine made by SII, will be launched around October this year for adults and for children by the first quarter of next year, depending on DCGI approvals.
WHO has declared B.1.617 as a "variant of concern" and the update noted that this variant has "increased transmissibility", disease severity is "under investigation", risk of reinfection is "under investigation, possible modest reduction in neutralization activity (B.1.617.1)".
India's drug regulator has initiated a probe and sought further details from the WHO after the global health body issued an alert that cough syrups manufactured by an Indian firm could potentially be linked to the death of children in Gambia.
Wang Guangfa, a respiratory expert from Peking University First Hospital, warned that Beijing may experience a spike in severe COVID-19 cases over the next fortnight.
The government has asked social media companies to immediately remove any content from their platform that uses or refers to the term 'Indian variant' of coronavirus, to curb misinformation around COVID-19, sources said Friday.
A 31-year-old man from Kannur in Kerala tested positive for monkeypox on Monday, making it the second confirmed case of the disease in India, a Union health ministry official said.
The Union health ministry on Monday reviewed the steps for health screening of international travellers arriving in India at airports and ports after two cases of Monkeypox were reported in the country.
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