At the Gotri Hospital in Vadodara on Tuesday. (Express Photo by Bhupendra Rana)Coronavirus India Live Updates: India on Wednesday reported 15,223 new cases of coronavirus infections, the most in the last one week. So far, more than one crore and 6.1 lakh people have been infected. Almost 97 per cent of the infected people have recovered, while 1.92 lakh cases are currently active. As many as 151 deaths were reported on Wednesday. Kerala reported 6,815 new cases, the highest in more than two months and Maharashtra had 3,015 new infections.
In total 7.86 lakh healthcare workers have received COVID-19 vaccine jabs till the evening of the fifth day of the immunisation drive, according to a provisional report of the Union Health Ministry on Wednesday, PTI reported. On Wednesday, 1,12,007 beneficiaries were vaccinated till 6 pm across 20 states and Union Territories, it said, adding the final report for the day will be complied by late in the night.
Ten cases of adverse events following immunization (AEFI) — four in Delhi, two in Karnataka, and one each in Uttarakhand, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and West Bengal — have required hospitalisation so far, additional secretary in the Health Ministry Manohar Agnani said. “There has been no case of serious/severe adverse event attributable to COVID-19 vaccination till date,” Agnani said.
Hospital staff waiting for beneficiaries of Covid-19 vaccine at a vaccination centre in Sector 45, Chandigarh on Tuesday. (Express photo by Kamleshwar SIngh)
India on Wednesday reported 15,223 new cases of coronavirus infections, the most in the last one week. So far, more than one crore and 6.1 lakh people have been infected. Almost 97 per cent of the infected people have recovered, while 1.92 lakh cases are currently active. As many as 151 deaths were reported on Wednesday. Kerala reported 6,815 new cases, the highest in more than two months and Maharashtra had 3,015 new infections.
Delhi recorded 228 fresh COVID-19 cases and 10 deaths on Wednesday, authorities said, as the total number of tests conducted till date crossed the one-crore mark. On Monday, the city had recorded 161 cases, the lowest in nearly nine months, with a positivity rate of 0.32 per cent.
The infection tally in the city stood at over 6.33 lakh and the death toll mounted to 10,774 with the new fatalities, the authorities said on Wednesday. These 228 new cases came out the 63,161 tests conducted the previous day, including 32,957 RT-PCR tests and 30,204 rapid antigen tests, according to the latest bulletin issued by the Delhi Health Department. The number of tests per million was over 5.2 lakh as on Tuesday, while the cumulative figure crossed the one-crore mark.
srael has included pregnant women among those getting priority access to COVID-19 vaccines, seeing no risk to them or their foetuses, a senior public health official said on Wednesday.
The decision followed the hospitalisation this week of several pregnant women with COVID-19 complications amid surging coronavirus contagions. At least one was put on a ventilator and her baby delivered by Caesarean section, Israeli media said.
Israel launched a vaccination drive on Dec. 19 with a focus on the elderly, those with risky medical conditions and some emergency workers. More than a quarter of its citizens have now received the Pfizer Inc. vaccine, health officials say. (Reuters)
In total 7.86 lakh healthcare workers have received COVID-19 vaccine jabs till the evening of the fifth day of the immunisation drive, according to a provisional report of the Union Health Ministry on Wednesday, PTI reported. On Wednesday, 1,12,007 beneficiaries were vaccinated till 6 pm across 20 states and Union Territories, it said, adding the final report for the day will be complied by late in the night.
Ten cases of adverse events following immunization (AEFI) — four in Delhi, two in Karnataka, and one each in Uttarakhand, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and West Bengal — have required hospitalisation so far, additional secretary in the Health Ministry Manohar Agnani said. “There has been no case of serious/severe adverse event attributable to COVID-19 vaccination till date,” Agnani said.
China on Wednesday boasted that several world leaders have taken its COVID-19 vaccines, but remained silent on why the top Chinese leaders are yet to take the jab. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying in her daily media briefing here named leaders of several countries who have taken one of the two COVID-19 vaccines made in China, publicly reposing their faith in them.
Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Seychelles President Wavel Ramkalawan, leaders of the UAE, Bahrain, Egypt and Indonesia have been publicly inoculated with Chinese vaccines, she said. "China has started the inoculation of the vaccines in key groups. We will also carry out vaccination for all Chinese citizens for free. All people that meet the conditions should be vaccinated in an orderly manner," she said.
Responding to a query whether top Chinese leaders including President Xi Jinping, Premier Li Keqiang and others have taken the jabs, she said: "As for the specific question you asked, I have no answer at this moment." (PTI)
A nasal COVID-19 vaccine will be easy to give to school-going children who bear a "very mild" load of the disease but they are infectious, AIIMS Director Randeep Guleria said on Wednesday. The noted pulmonologist, who was interacting with the personnel of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) during their 16th Raising Day celebrations here, also said that people who have contracted coronavirus should also get the jab about 4-6 weeks after recovery.
"It (coronavirus infection) is very mild in children but they are infectious. They can spread the disease."
"The vaccines that have come are not approved for children because there have been no studies conducted on children but this (vaccination) is a very important step and trials are being done," he said.
Once children start going to the school regularly and they contract the COVID-19 infection, they will not have much problem but if they bring it home they can spread it to their parents or grandparents, the chief of the premier Delhi-based All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) said. (PTI)
China's capital Beijing recorded another seven coronavirus cases on Wednesday amid a lingering outbreak in the country's north. Another 46 were recorded in Jilin province, 16 in Heilongjiang on the border with Russia and 19 in Hebei, the province surrounding Beijing. China has now recorded a total of 88,557 cases since the virus was first detected in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019, with 4,635 deaths.
China is hoping to vaccinate 50 million people against the virus by mid-February and is also releasing schools early and telling citizens to stay put during the Lunar New Year travel rush that begins in coming days. A panel of experts commissioned by the World Health Organisation criticized China and other countries this week for not moving to stem the initial outbreak of the coronavirus earlier, prompting Beijing to concede it could have done better but also to defend its response. (PTI)
As India launched the world's largest COVID-19 vaccination drive, several UN agencies are working closely with authorities for the massive vaccination programme, a spokesperson for the UN chief has said. In India, the UN team led by Resident Coordinator Renata Dessallien is supporting the government and UN partners in the massive COVID-19 vaccination programme, said Stephane Dujarric, Spokesman for Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Tuesday.
"UN agencies are working closely with authorities to prepare and launch what is currently the world's largest vaccination drive," he told reporters at the daily press briefing, adding that as of Tuesday, the Indian government has vaccinated nearly half a million people.
India on January 16 rolled out the massive coronavirus vaccination drive under which two domestically manufactured vaccines -- Covishield and Covaxin --are being administered to frontline health workers across the country. While Oxford-AstraZeneca's Covishield is being manufactured by the Serum Institute of India, the Covaxin is being produced by Bharat Biotech. (PTI)
India's COVID-19 active caseload has fallen below the 2-lakh mark after nearly 7 months and comprises just 1.86 per cent of the total infections, the Union Health Ministry said on Wednesday. It said that 72 per cent of the active cases are concentrated in Kerala, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, West Bengal. Thirty-four states and UTs have less than 10,000 active cases.
"The active cases have fallen to 1,97,201.This is the lowest after 207 days. The total active cases were 1,97,387 on June 27, 2020," the ministry underlined.
A total of 16,988 people have recovered in a span of 24 hours. This has led to a net decline of 3,327 from the total active caseload, it said. India's daily new cases are on a steady decline which has also contributed to the shrinkage in active caseload, it underscored. (PTI)
In a perfect world, the entrance to every office, restaurant and school would offer a coronavirus test — one with absolute accuracy, and able to instantly determine who was virus-free and safe to admit and who, positively infected, should be turned away.
That reality does not exist. But as the nation struggles to regain a semblance of normal life amid the uncontrolled spread of the virus, some scientists think that a quick test consisting of little more than a stinky strip of paper might at least get us close.
The test does not look for the virus itself, nor can it diagnose disease. Rather, it screens for one of Covid-19’s trademark signs: the loss of the sense of smell. Since last spring, many researchers have come to recognize the symptom, which is also known as anosmia, as one of the best indicators of an ongoing coronavirus infection, capable of identifying even people who don’t otherwise feel sick.
As India began exporting Covid-19 vaccine shots to its neighbours on Wednesday, Former President of the Maldives Mohamed Nasheed said it is the beginning of the end of this terrible virus.
"Today, an Air India plane will land in Male’ with 100,000 doses of AstraZeneca vaccine - a gift from India. For Maldives it’s the beginning of the end of this terrible virus. During tsunami, ‘88 coup, water crisis or corona, India has been our first responder and dependable friend," he said in a tweet.
A consignment of 18,000 Covid-19 vaccine doses reached Goa by flight from Mumbai on Wednesday and the immunisation drive in the state will resume on Friday, a senior health department official said, PTI reported.
Vaccination in the state began last Saturday at seven centres, including two private hospitals.
Goa Health Services Director Dr Jose D'Sa said the next round of vaccination would be held from Friday onwards.
At least 1,000 doses of the Covishield vaccine were found in a partially frozen condition at the Silchar Medical College and Hospital (SMCH) in Assam’s Cachar district on Saturday, leading authorities to order a probe into the incident.
Officials said the vaccines were found in that condition on the morning of January 16, right after India’s vaccination drive was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
As India launched the world’s largest COVID-19 vaccination drive, several UN agencies are working closely with authorities for the massive vaccination programme, a spokesperson for the UN chief has said.
In India, the UN team led by Resident Coordinator Renata Dessallien is supporting the government and UN partners in the massive COVID-19 vaccination programme, said Stephane Dujarric, Spokesman for Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Tuesday.
In a slight improvement on the third day of the Covid-19 inoculation drive in Punjab, 37.7 per cent of registered health workers turned up to receive the first jab. A total of 2,160 health workers got themselves vaccinated out of the target of 5,719
The figure was better than the previous sessions on Saturday and Monday, when only 1,327 (22.6 per cent) and 1,992 (33.1 per cent) workers had come forward for the Covishield vaccine, respectively.
Meanwhile, in the United States, President-elect Joe Biden arrived in the nation’s capital Tuesday for the first time since his election, and on the eve of his inauguration, he did what his predecessor declined to do by leading a national mourning for Americans killed by the coronavirus.
In a somber sundown ceremony at the Lincoln Memorial in a city virtually occupied by troops on guard against political violence, Biden paid tribute to the victims of the pandemic on the same day that the death toll in the United States topped a staggering 400,000 — and almost a year to the day from the first report of the virus appearing in the country.
For months, the World Health Organization has called on countries to come together to ensure a fair distribution of Covid-19 vaccines among rich and poor nations. Now it’s starting to lose patience.
On Monday, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said drug manufacturers had prioritized regulatory approval in rich countries, where profits are highest, rather than submitting full dossiers to get the greenlight from the global health body. He said that could delay distribution through Covax, a WHO-backed initiative that aims to supply vaccines to poorer countries.
The WHO’s struggles have opened the door for China to start ramping up its vaccine diplomacy, with Foreign Minister Wang Yi pledging last week to hand out more than a million doses during a swing through Southeast Asia. That amounted to a geopolitical win just before the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden, who has vowed to put the US back in the WHO following Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the organization last year.
India on Wednesday reported 13,823 new Covid-19 cases and 162 deaths, taking the total tally of cases to 1,05,95,660, according to data from the Union Health Ministry.
While there are 1,97,201 active cases in the country, the overall death toll stands at 1,52,718.