Battling global adversity over the coronavirus and bracing for a World Health Organisation inquiry over its origin, China on Friday claimed that just because COVID-19 cases were first reported in Wuhan does not mean the contagion originated from the central Chinese city.
WHO emergencies head Mike Ryan have urged countries to continue enforcing health measures such as mask-wearing, social distancing, hand-washing and testing.
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.
In the conversation, President Trump extended an invitation to Modi to attend the next G-7 summit to be held in the US, the Ministry of External Affairs said. On Saturday, Trump pitched for expansion of the G7 comprising the world's most advanced economies by including India and three other countries.
The decision was taken at a meeting headed by Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai with senior ministers, officials and the COVID-19 technical advisory committee consisting of experts in Bengaluru.
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.
With the reporting of Omicron, a highly mutated variant of SARSCoV-2 virus and its classification as a Variant of Concern (VoC) by the World Health Organisation (WHO), the Union Ministry of Health revised its 'Guidelines for international arrivals', Mandaviya said in a written reply.
A technical advisory group of the World Health Organisation was on Tuesday reviewing data on Covaxin for the emergency use listing of India's indigenously-made vaccine and it could pronounce its decision within the next 24 hours or so, a spokesperson said.
Former South Africa batting all-rounder Farhan Behardien is hoping that the new COVID-19 variant, which is causing alarm here, will not jeopardise India's tour of the country next month as young cricketers of his nation need the series "more than ever".
The Chernobyl nuclear power plant's personnel are continuing to service the facilities and monitor the radiation situation at the station as usual, a top Russian official claimed on Friday, a day after Russian forces took over the decommissioned facility after a fierce fight with Ukrainian soldiers guarding it.
Addressing a press briefing, Niti Aayog member (health) VK Paul said that though there has been an overall decline in case burden but the positivity rate is still over 10 per cent in 382 districts.
The National Institute of Virology (NIV) in Pune under the ICMR has isolated the monkeypox virus from the clinical specimen of a patient, which can pave the way for development of diagnostic kits and vaccines against the disease, officials said on Wednesday.
Amid concerns over dangerous side-effects of the Oxford's COVID-19 vaccine, India is evaluating all serious adverse events post-vaccination to determine the causality aspects of Covishield and Covaxin, an expert associated with the process said on Saturday.
As India launches the world's most ambitious and biggest vaccination drive against COVID-19, the country will encounter the formidable challenge of rapidly scaling up distribution of the vaccines to secure immunity for its entire population, two prominent Indian scientists at World Health Organisation have 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 a letter to states and UTs on Monday, Additional Secretary in the Union Health Ministry Arti Ahuja advised them to pay attention to this aspect immediately and increase the testing in a strategic manner keeping in view the trend of case positivity in specific areas.
In an Instagram video, Sameera Reddy shows you how to clean your hands to protect yourself against COVID-19. Take a look!
A bike-rider stopping and asking another rider on the road why he sneezed without covering his face with a handkerchief as it could cause the spread of the coronavirus.
'There is no rationale behind the modelling methodology used by WHO to arrive at the estimate'
The COVID-19 patients at high risk of hospitalisation or those with severe disease should be given a combination of two antibody treatments, according to latest World Health Organization guidelines published in The BMJ on Friday.
The World Health Organisation team's visit has become a bone of contention as Beijing, which questions the widely-held view about the virus' origins in Wuhan, had delayed granting permission to it.
The B.1.640.2 variant has been reported by researchers at institute IHU Mediterranee Infection in at least 12 cases, and has been linked to travel to African country Cameroon.
The WHO said that studies have highlighted that the spread of the second wave has been much faster than the first in India.
It was on January 30, 2020 when a third-year medical student from Wuhan university tested positive for coronavirus, becoming the country's first COVID-19 patient, days after she had returned home following semester holidays.
Six cases of the new COVID-19 Omicron variant have been identified in Scotland on Monday, taking the UK's total to nine following three cases detected in England earlier.
Trump also announced that the US will end special treatment of Hong Kong in response to Chinese imposition of new controls.
A technical advisory group of the UN health agency which met on Tuesday has sought "additional clarifications" from Bharat Biotech for Covaxin to conduct a final "risk-benefit assessment" for Emergency Use Listing of the vaccine.
Benfica's Primeira Liga match at Belenenses on Saturday was abandoned amid extraordinary scenes after their COVID-19-hit opponents were forced to name a team of nine players - including two goalkeepers.
India has sent a team to Kabul to oversee the delivery of India's humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan and hold discussions with the Taliban over the aid provided by New Delhi.
Beijing's health officials on Monday announced 29 fresh cases taking the total cases to 70 in the city.
The world is witnessing the fourth surge of the COVID-19 pandemic and India has to be on guard and cannot afford to slacken, said Union health secretary Rajesh Bhushan on Friday.
Speaking on the National Technology Day, Swaminathan said, "I would like to commend and congratulate the minister and colleagues for having contained so far the COVID pandemic in India and having kept both the number of cases and the number of deaths very low compared to other countries."
The man had attended a stag party recently in Manali in Himachal Pradesh.
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.
Voluntary use of masks must be promoted in the country in view of Covid-19's new XE variant, healthcare experts said, calling it the single-most effective intervention against all variants of the coronavirus.
There is mounting evidence that suggests that Omicron subvariants -BA.4 and BA.5 - are infecting people who have been vaccinated.
In India, air pollution is most severe in the Indo-Gangetic Plain (northern India), where topography and meteorology concentrate pollution from energy, mobility, industry, agriculture, and other activities, the researchers said.
Biden said that the US will be part of WHO's fight against the coronavirus.
The technical advisory group will now meet on November 3 for a final assessment.
The Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO) in a statement urged world leaders not to implement 'knee-jerk' policy decisions in response to the detection of the Omicron variant.
© 2026 Rediff.com - Advertise with us - Disclaimer - Privacy Policy - Sitemap - Feedback - About us - Terms of use - Grievances