Page 32 - Coronavirus

Possible to make new Covid strain vax in 100 days: Gennova BioPharma

Co gets nod for Omicron booster of its mRNA vaccine

Active Covid-19 cases dip to 1,910 after India recorded 63 new infections

India logged 63 new coronavirus infections, while the active cases have dipped to 1,910 from 1,925, according to the Union Health Ministry data updated on Monday. The death toll was recorded at 5,31,896, the data updated at 8 am stated. The Covid case tally stood at 4.49 crore (4,49,93,543) while the national COVID-19 recovery rate has been recorded at 98.81 per cent, the ministry said. The number of people who have recuperated from the disease surged to 4,44,59,737 and the case fatality rate was recorded at 1.18 per cent. According to the ministry's website, 220.66 crore doses of Covid vaccine have been administered in the country so far under the nationwide vaccination drive.

OTT emerged as biggest medium, bridged geographical barriers: Anurag Thakur

Union Information and Broadcasting Anurag Thakur said OTT, which emerged as one of the biggest mediums during the COVID-19 time, has bridged the geographical barriers. He said with the vanishing of boundary in OTT, the possibility of content from across the world being accepted by the pan-world audience has increased and cited the example of Korean content. "Soft power doesn't have any boundary. The Covid-triggered lockdown had spurted the emergence of the OTT platform in a big way," he said at an awards programme here on Saturday night. He said Bengal, the land of a visionary and poet like Rabindranath Tagore, a film icon like Satyajit Ray, a new direction giver filmmaker like Ritwik Ghatak, a new age singing sensation like Arijit Singh can win the hearts of OTT audiences in the world with new content in near future. Thakur in this context harped on the issue of the need for any regulation on OTT content or not by the stakeholders. "The content will be seen by family. On the issu

Did Centre ignore its own red flags on Covid vaccine side-effects?

With the global panic over the Covid-19 pandemic finally waning, the focus is again on preventive and curative measures, mainly the 'life-saver vaccines'

India records 108 new Covid-19 cases, active infections dip to 1,983

India recorded 108 new coronavirus cases, raising the tally to 4.49 crore, while the active cases decreased to 1,983, the Union Health Ministry said on Saturday. The death toll due to the viral disease stood at 5,31,893, according to data updated by the ministry at 8 am. The national COVID-19 recovery rate was recorded at 98.81 per cent, it stated. The number of people who have recuperated from the disease surged to 4,44,59,514, while the case fatality rate was recorded at 1.18 per cent, it said. So far, the country has recorded a total of 4.49 crore (4,49,93,390) coronavirus cases. According to the ministry's website, 220.66 crore doses of Covid vaccine have been administered in the country so far under the nationwide inoculation drive.

China withholds indicator of Covid deaths as cremation data not released

China has dropped the number of cremations held last winter from a quarterly report, withholding a key indicator of the pandemic death toll during the countrys largest Covid wave, the media reported

India records 69 fresh Covid-19 infections, active cases decline to 2,017

India has recorded 96 fresh coronavirus cases while the number of active cases has decreased to 2,017, the Union health ministry said on Friday. The death toll due to the viral disease stands at 5,31,893, according to the ministry's data updated at 8 am. With the fresh cases, the country's COVID-19 tally has climbed to 4,49,93,282, the ministry said. The national COVID-19 recovery rate has been recorded at 98.81 per cent, it added. The number of people who have recuperated from the disease has gone up to 4,44,59,372 while the case fatality rate was recorded at 1.18 per cent. According to the ministry's website, 220.66 crore doses of anti-Covid vaccines have so far been administered in the country.

Covid-19 virus first infected 3 scientists at China's Wuhan lab: Report

The SARS-CoV-2 virus, which caused the deadly Covid-19 pandemic, first infected three scientists working at China's infamous Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), according to a new report

Boris Johnson deliberately misled Parliament over Covid lockdown breaches

Former British prime minister Boris Johnson deliberately and repeatedly misled Parliament when he denied knowledge of Covid-19 law-breaching parties in Downing Street, a cross-party parliamentary panel said on Thursday in its damning report into the Partygate scandal. The Commons Privileges Committee released its final report into the Partygate scandal days after Johnson, 58, resigned from Parliament as a MP, accusing the members of the committee of a "witch hunt" against him. Finding him in breach of the Commons rules, the committee was also highly critical of his attacks on its integrity and recommended a suspension of 90 days from Parliament had he not resigned. We have concluded above that in deliberately misleading the House Mr Johnson committed a serious contempt. The contempt was all the more serious because it was committed by the Prime Minister, the most senior member of the government, the Privileges Committee report said, in a historic admonishment of a former ...

New MRI technique reveals changes in brain post Covid-19 infection

The new imaging technique, known as correlated diffusion imaging (CDI), was developed by systems design engineering professor Alexander Wong at University of Waterloo

Johnson deliberately misled Parliament over Covid lockdown breaches: Report

An inquiry report by a UK Parliamentary committee revealed on Thursday that former Prime Minister Boris Johnson deliberately misled the House of Commons over breaches during the Covid-19 lockdown

India reports 106 new Covid-19 infections, active cases decline to 2,067

India has recorded 106 new coronavirus infections, while the active cases have dipped to 2,067, according to the Union Health Ministry data updated on Thursday. The death toll was recorded at 5,31,893 with one death being reported from Chhattisgarh in the last 24 hours, the data updated at 8 am stated. The Covid case tally was recorded at 4.49 crore (4,49,93,186). The national COVID-19 recovery rate has been recorded at 98.81 per cent, the ministry said, The number of people who have recuperated from the disease surged to 4,44,59,226 and the case fatality rate was recorded at 1.18 per cent. According to the ministry's website, 220.66 crore doses of Covid vaccine have been administered in the country so far under the nationwide vaccination drive.

Govt reinforcing public health infra to deal with emergency like Covid: KCR

The Telangana government is bolstering the health care facilities by increasing budget allocations to improve public health and to effectively deal with emergencies like Covid-19 should they arise, Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao said on Wednesday. In his address after laying the foundation for a new block in state-run Nizam's Institute of Medical Sciences (NIMS) here, he said the allocation for health sector in the budget was Rs 2,100 crore in 2014 (when the state was formed), while it was over Rs 12,360 crore in 2023-24. Recalling his interaction with a group of entomologists a few years ago, he quoted them as having said that infectious diseases like COVID-19 may surface again in the future. "They told me that losses would be minimal where health systems are strong. Many people would die and the losses would be heavy where the health system is weak. We can understand the importance of the health department from this," he said. "Since then, we have been strengthening this ...

Equitable access to vaccines could have prevented half of Covid deaths

A more equitable access to Covid vaccines could have prevented more than 50 per cent of COVID-19 deaths in 20 lower income countries, according to a new study. Scientists from the Northeastern University, US, have estimated 518,000 deaths could have been averted if the 20 countries in the study had received the vaccines at the same time as the US and other high income countries and in comparable quantities, using a computational epidemic model. The countries included in the study were Angola, Kenya, Ghana, Cote d'Ivoire, Mozambique, Uganda, Rwanda, Zambia, Egypt, Morocco, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Bolivia, El Salvador, Honduras, Philippines and Kyrgyzstan. The study is published in the journal Nature Communications. The estimation that "thousands and thousands" of lives were lost to vaccine inequity was a "punch in the stomach," said Alessandro Vespignani, director of Northeastern's Network Science Institute and the study's co-author. "We need to hav

Human brain's cerebellum affected more than other regions from Covid: Study

The human brain's cerebellum might be more vulnerable to Covid infections than other brain regions, a new study employing an innovated MRI technique has found. The study from Rotman Research Institute and Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto, Canada, reinforces the idea that Covid can lead to changes in the brain, it said. The new imaging technique, called correlated diffusion imaging (CDI), was developed by Alexander Wong, a systems design engineering professor, University of Waterloo, Canada. A new form of MRI, CDI can better highlight the differences in the way water molecules move in tissue by capturing and mixing MRI signals at different gradient pulse strengths and timings, the study published in the journal Human Brain Mapping said. Wong had previously developed CDI as a better imaging measure for detecting cancer. The CDI imaging of frontal-lobe white matter (in the brain's cerebrum) revealed a less restricted diffusion of water molecules in COVID-19 patients. At the same time, i

Vaccines access could have prevented 50% Covid deaths globally: Research

Better access to vaccines could have prevented more than 50 per cent of Covid-19 deaths in 20 lower income countries, scientists contend in a new study

India reports 120 new Covid-19 cases, active infections dip to 2,148

India has recorded 120 new coronavirus infections, while the active cases have decreased to 2,148 from 2,248, according to the Union Health Ministry data updated on Wednesday. The death toll stood at 5,31,892, the data updated at 8 am stated. The Covid case tally was recorded at 4.49 crore (4,49,93,080). The national recovery rate has been recorded at 98.81 per cent, according to the health ministry website. The number of people who have recuperated from the disease surged to 4,44,59,040 and the case fatality rate was recorded at 1.18 per cent. According to the ministry's website, 220.66 crore doses of Covid vaccine have been administered in the country so far under the nationwide vaccination drive.

Foreigners now flocking to New Zealand, net immigration surges in April

New Zealand has loosened immigration policy, allowing more foreign workers to enter the country to ease labor shortages that had became acute when the border was shut during the Covid-19 pandemic

Strengthen routine immunisation, focus on unvaccinated children: WHO

The World Health Organisation (WHO) on Monday called for focused efforts to provide life-saving vaccines to nearly 4.6 million unvaccinated children in Southeast Asia as countries intensify efforts to equal or surpass pre-Covid vaccination coverage levels. The number of unvaccinated or zero dose children more than doubled from 2 million in 2019 to 4.6 million in the region by 2021 despite efforts by countries to maintain or restore routine childhood immunisation, said Poonam Khetrapal Singh, Regional Director, WHO, South-East Asia. "We need to urgently address gaps and challenges aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic," Singh said. She was addressing representatives of health ministries, national immunisation advisory groups and partner agencies participating in a four-day regional workshop to strengthen routine immunisation capacities post-Covid. "We need to accurately identify high-risk areas with high numbers of zero-dose children, and rapidly improve access and uptake of routine .

India logs 92 fresh Covid-19 cases, active infections decrease to 2,350

India has recorded 92 fresh coronavirus infections, while the active cases have decreased to 2,350, according to Union health ministry data updated on Monday. The death toll has remained at 5,31,891, the data updated at 8 am stated. On February 14, the country had reported 74 cases in a day. The total tally of Covid cases is 4.49 crore (4,49,92,880) and the active cases now comprise 0.01 per cent of the total infections, it stated. The national Covid recovery rate has been recorded at 98.81 per cent, according to the health ministry's website. The number of people who have recuperated from the disease has increased to 4,44,58,639 while the case fatality rate has been recorded at 1.18 per cent, it stated. According to the ministry's website, 220.66 crore doses of Covid vaccine have been administered in the country so far.