Students undergo thermal screening before entering as schools reopened after relaxation in Covid induced restrictions, in Mathura. (PTI)Coronavirus Omicron India LIVE News: Assam became the first state in the country to withdraw all Covid-related curbs and restrictions on Tuesday. The state is going back to normalcy that prevailed before the Covid-19 pandemic struck the country. From 6 am on Tuesday all curbs related including night curfew and restrictions of socio-religious gatherings, educational institutions were lifted, PTI reported. As per an order issued by Chief Secretary Jishnu Baruah, wearing masks and social distancing in public places, as well as the practice of using hand sanitisers, will continue to prevail until further orders.
India recorded 27,409 new Covid-19 cases in the last 24 hours, registering a sharp dip from Monday’s 34,113 infections. India’s active case load now stands at 4,23,127, comprising 0.99 per cent of the total cases. In the same period, 347 fatalities have been reported, taking the Covid-19 death toll to 5,09,358. The daily Covid-19 cases have remained below 1 lakh for nine consecutive days now. The daily and weekly positivity rates stand at 2.23 per cent and 3.63 per cent respectively.
Meanwhile, in Delhi, Jamia Millia Islamia announced that physical classes for final-year postgraduate students will resume from March 2 and for final-year undergraduate students from mid-March. The university has mandated a negative RTPCR report along with a valid ID card for those coming for offline classes. The decision came a day after schools resumed for students of all classes as Delhi saw a dip in Covid-19 cases.
The traders' body in Delhi on Tuesday demanded scrapping of the DDMA's graded response action plan (GRAP) for Covid management ahead of the panel's proposed meeting later this week to discuss further relaxations amid a significant improvement in the pandemic situation here.
The GRAP devised by the Delhi Disaster Management Authority came into force in August last year, stipulating measures to be taken by the government as per positivity rate and bed occupancy for locking and unlocking of various activities.
The Chamber of Trade and Industry (CTI), an association of traders in Delhi, has demanded that the DDMA should scrap the GRAP, saying unless it goes, "the sword of restrictions" will keep on hanging over their heads. (PTI)
After dropping below 10,000, the daily Covid-19 cases in Kerala saw a marginal increase with the state on Tuesday recording 11,776 fresh infections which raised the total caseload to 64,28,148. The southern state had reported 8,989 fresh cases on Monday.
Kerala, on Tuesday, also reported 304 deaths which pushed the total fatalities in Kerala to 62,681, according to a government release.
Of the deaths, 20 were reported in the last 24 hours, 154 were those which occurred in the last few days but were not recorded due to late receipt of documents and 130 were designated as Covid-19 deaths after receiving appeals based on the new guidelines of the Centre and the directions of the Supreme Court, the release said. (PTI)
Amid a decline in daily Covid cases in Delhi, the number of patients under home isolation here has gradually fallen to 2,361, a steep drop of 80 per cent in the last 14 days, according to official data.
The number of home isolation cases on February 1 was 12,312. The number of containment zones, which were also slowly falling in this period, also registered a dip in its count to 16,154 on February 14 from 37,116 on February 1, according to official figures shared by the health department. On February 14, the home isolation cases count stood at 2,361, registering a fall of 80 per cent in the figures in the last two weeks.
The number of daily cases in Delhi has been on the decline after touching the record high of 28,867 on January 13. The city had recorded a positivity rate of 30.6 per cent on January 14, the highest during the ongoing wave of the pandemic. (PTI)
Assam withdrew all Covid-related restrictions on Tuesday reverting to the situation that existed before the nationwide lockdown on March 25, 2020, following the outbreak of the disease, officials said.
They claimed that Assam is the first state in the country to withdraw all Covid restrictions.
All restrictions were lifted from 6 am on Tuesday with night curfew and curbs on socio-religious gatherings, educational institutions and others withdrawn, the officials said.
Wearing masks, maintaining social distance, regular hand washing and use of hand sanitisers at places of the public gathering are mandatory and will remain in force until further orders, according to a notification issued by Chief Secretary Jishnu Baruah. (PTI)
The head of the World Health Organization's Europe office said Tuesday that health officials are turning their attention to growing rates of Covid-19 infection in Eastern Europe, where six countries -- including Russia and Ukraine -- have seen a doubling in case counts over the last two weeks.
Dr Hans Kluge said the 53-country region, which stretches to former Soviet republics into central Asia, has now tallied more than 165 million confirmed coronavirus cases and 1.8 million deaths linked to the pandemic _ including 25,000 in the last week alone.
"Today, our focus is towards the east of the WHO European region," Kluge said in Russian at a media briefing, pointing to a surge in the highly transmissible omicron variant. "Over the past two weeks, cases of Covid-19 have more than doubled in six countries in this part of the region (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, the Russian Federation, and Ukraine)." "As anticipated, the omicron wave is moving east: 10 eastern Member States have now detected this variant," he said.
Omicron, however, is milder than previous variants and health care systems in most countries around the world aren't under strain.
Kluge sought to put an emphasis on improving vaccination rates, which have lagged in Eastern Europe compared to the rest of the region. He said less than 40% of people over age 60 in Bosnia, Bulgaria, Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan have completed a full Covid-19 vaccine series. (AP)
Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam on Tuesday ruled out a citywide lockdown to fight Covid-19, but a surge of infections meant she could not "preclude" the possibility of postponing next month's chief executive election.
Lam, who has not confirmed whether she will seek another five-year term as head of the Chinese ruled city, said her government's response to the outbreak had not been satisfactory with hospitals and medical staff overwhelmed.
Daily infections have surged by about 20 times over the past two weeks. Health authorities reported 1,619 infections on Tuesday, a new daily record with around 5,400 preliminary positive cases.
"There are no plans for a widespread city lockdown," Lam told a news conference. (Reuters)
Singapore's biennial air show opened Tuesday on a smaller scale than before the pandemic, even as the aviation sector gears up for a recovery two years after coronavirus outbreaks nearly paralysed air travel.
The three-day air show began Tuesday. Members of the general public are not allowed, but about 600 exhibitors are showing their products and services. That's down from 930 during the last show in February 2020, when coronavirus cases were just beginning to rise.
Experts say the aviation market is poised for recovery, with defense spending on the rise and commercial aviation picking up despite the latest wave of omicron-driven infections. (AP)
Mild- to moderate-intensity exercise for 90 minutes after getting a flu or Covid-19 vaccine may boost the levels of antibodies in the body, according to a study.
The findings, published in the journal Brain, Behavior, and Immunity, could directly benefit people with a range of fitness levels.
Participants who cycled on a stationary bike or took a brisk walk for an hour-and-a-half after vaccination produced more antibodies in the following four weeks compared to those who did not exercise. (PTI)
New York City fired more than a thousand workers who failed to comply with the city's Covid-19 vaccine mandate, the mayor's office said.
The 1,430 workers who lost their jobs represent less than one per cent of the 3,70,000-person city workforce and are far fewer terminations than expected before a Friday deadline to get the shots.
The city sent notices in late January to up to 4,000 workers, saying they had to show proof they got at least two doses of the vaccine or else they'd lose their jobs. Three-quarters of those workers had already been on leave without pay for months, having missed an earlier deadline for getting vaccinated in order to stay on the job. (AP)
As Covid-19 cases and positivity rate declined steadily across the city, the Service Department of the Delhi Government has withdrawn the “Cancellation of Leave” order issued on January 5 to manage the coronavirus pandemic situation.
When Omicron cases increased and crossed the 1,000 mark, the Delhi Government on January 5 cancelled all granted leaves for all the officers, officials and staff deployed in its departments and schools. The order was issued to manage the Covid situation and arrangements such as vaccination, testings, oxygen, hospitals and others things related to the pandemic in the city. Read more
A special school for children with genetic and intellectual disabilities, housed in a Nizam-era mansion on the campus of the Institute of Genetics and Hospital for Genetic Diseases in Begumpet, located only a stone’s throw away from the Chief Minister’s official residence, was reduced to a film shooting location, courtesy the Covid-19 pandemic. Through these tough months, however, the teachers kept the students engaged in the curriculum through virtual classes via WhatsApp.
“It could take a full year for such a child to do something as simple as brushing their teeth by themselves. What we do is identify their personal, social, and academic goals as per their age. Short-term goals are assessed based on their needs, personal skills, and IQ. If not practised regularly, they would forget everything and we have to start again from scratch,” says Prashanti, one of the three teachers at the school, explaining why it was necessary to continue with online education for her students with special needs. Read more
Unless India sees four weeks of low and stable numbers of COVID-19 cases with only minor fluctuations, the disease cannot be considered to be entering the endemic stage, noted virologist Dr T Jacob John said.
He also said the endemic phase of COVID-19 is expected to last many months and it is " most unlikely" that another variant with higher transmissibility than Omicron and greater virulence than Delta will emerge.
"When case numbers in a community are plotted on graphs, the pattern of rise, peak and fall represent epidemic (or outbreak) and case numbers as a horizontal steady state are called endemic. When an epidemic pattern repeats, we call each a wave. So unless we see four weeks of low and stable numbers with only minor fluctuations, we cannot call the valley as endemic just as yet," John told PTI.
Nearly 95 per cent of swab samples examined in the latest round of genome sequencing in Mumbai were found infected with the Omicron variant of COVID-19, the city civic body has said.
The Omicron variant had triggered the third wave of the coronavirus pandemic in late December 2021 and it now ebbed in the Maharashtra state capital.
Mumbai reported 192 new COVID-19 cases on Monday, the lowest daily count since December 13, 2021, and two fresh fatalities linked to the infection.
The subject expert panel on Covid-19 vaccines on Monday recommended the drug regulator to grant emergency use authorisation to Hyderabad-based Biological E’s Corbevax for the age group of 12-18 years, subject to conditions, sources said.
The committee’s recommendations will be taken up by the drug regulator for formal approval of the vaccine in the next few days.
Corbevax is India’s first indigenously developed protein sub-unit vaccine against Covid-19. At present, India is administering Covid-19 vaccines to 15-18 years.
Phase 2/3 human trials of the country’s first homegrown mRNA vaccine developed by Pune-based Gennova Biopharmaceuticals have been completed and the firm is in the process of submitting data to the national regulatory authority. Plans are also afoot to test the vaccine in the paediatric population initially in a phase 2 trial.
The Drug Controller General of India, had approved Phase II and Phase III study protocols for HGCO19, India’s first mRNA-based Covid-19 vaccine, developed by Gennova Biopharmaceuticals Limited (“Gennova”) in August last year. Read more
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he has invoked emergency powers to try to quell the protests by truck drivers and others who have paralysed Ottawa and blocked border crossings in anger over the country's Covid-19 restrictions.
Trudeau ruled out using the military and said Monday that the emergency measures "will be time-limited, geographically targeted, as well as reasonable and proportionate to the threats they are meant to address."
For the past two weeks, hundreds and sometimes thousands of protesters in trucks and other vehicles have clogged the streets of Ottawa, the capital, railing against vaccine mandates. (AP)
The daily Covid-19 cases have remained below 1 lakh for nine consecutive days now. The daily and weekly positivity rates stand at 2.23 per cent and 3.63 per cent respectively.
Meanwhile, 173.42 crore vaccine doses have been administered so far.
India recorded 27,409 new Covid-19 cases in the last 24 hours, registering a sharp dip from Monday's 34,113 infections. India's active case load now stands at 4,23,127, comprising 0.99 per cent of the total cases.
In the same period, 347 fatalities have been reported, taking the Covid-19 death toll to 5,09,358.