Top Headlines: Tracking multiple Covid strains; FMCG companies hike prices

Business Standard bring you the latest updates on the new Covid variant and more

Too early to call new Covid variant more lethal, transmissible: ICMR

Structural changes in the heavily mutated Covid variant, first detected in South Africa, need not be interpreted as lethal or highly transmissible, said the ICMR on Friday, a day after the government called for rigorous testing of travellers from at-risk countries. Read more
 

Tracking multiple coronavirus variants that have been active over time

Multiple coronavirus variants have been detected in the country since the pandemic took hold in March 2020, with Delta being the most devastating. It accounted for a minority of the variants detected in January before the start of the second wave, shows data from tracker ‘Our World in Data’. But the share of the Delta variant samples began to climb steadily as the year progressed. Read more
 

Blow to consumers as India's leading FMCG companies hike prices again

India’s leading fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) companies like Hindustan Unilever (HUL), ITC and Parle Products have hiked the prices of their products in October and November in a bid to ease the pressure of rising raw material costs. HUL, the country’s largest FMCG company, has hiked prices in the range of 1-33 per cent across its portfolio. Read more
 

25% of Indians poor on MPI metric, says NITI Aayog report

Basing itself on the National Health Family Survey (NHFS) for 2015-16, the NITI Aayog has said in that year one in every four people in India was multidimensionally poor. “The headcount ratio answers the question ‘how many are poor?’ India’s national MPI (multidimensional poverty index) identifies 25.01 per cent of the population as multidimensionally poor,” the report said. Read more

Tomato prices soar, hitting already constrained family budgets

Tomato prices are shooting up, disturbing household budgets, which are already reeling from costlier edible oil and pulses for the past few months. According to the data from the Department of Consumer Affairs, the retail price of tomatoes in Delhi rose 79 per cent between October 1 and November 25 — from Rs 43 a kg to Rs 77 a kg. Read more

Govt allows scheduled international flights from Dec 15, air bubbles to end

Around 20 months after flights were suspended due to the pandemic, the government has announced opening scheduled international passenger flights from December 15 in a graded fashion based on Covid-19 transmission risk. Read more