Coronavirus in India LIVE Updates: Covid-19 pandemic is 'nowhere near over', says WHO chief

Chhattisgarh on Tuesday reported 385 Covid-19 cases at a positivity rate of 3.05 per cent, which took the tally to 11,56,904, an official said. The death toll increased by one and stood at 14,045, he added. So far, 11,40,959 persons have recovered from the infection, including 162 during the day, he said.

Maharashtra on Tuesday recorded 2,435 fresh Covid-19 cases and 13 fatalities, taking the tally to 80,07,648 and the toll to 1,47,991, the health department said in a bulletin. Mumbai recorded 420 cases and zero fatality. Nine infections- six patients of BA.4 and BA.5 and three of BA.2.75- of sub-variants of Omicron were also reported. All these patients were from Pune. On Monday, the state had recorded 1,189 Covid-19 cases and two fatalities.

Himachal Pradesh on Tuesday recorded 356 covid cases, the highest single day number in the recent days, officials said. With this, the state's Covid-19 tally climbed to 2,88,135 on Tuesday, officials said. So far, 4,125 people have died from the infection in the state since its outbreak. The state had recorded 244 case on Monday.

The governments across the globe have wasted more than a billion doses of the Covid vaccines, even as many people, including health workers, particularly in the low-income countries are yet to get at least a single shot, according to a report. The report, by science and data analytics company Airfinity, assumed a 10 per cent wastage rate from June 2021 when global dose sharing began. Public reports of vaccine waste and expirations from around the world showed that some 158 million doses have been discarded throughout the world.

Pakistan reported 255 new Covid-19 cases and one more death during the last 24 hours, the country's Health Ministry said on Tuesday. The tally of infected people increased to 1,543,505 with the new cases, according to the data released by the ministry. According to the Ministry's statistics, a total of 30,424 people died from Covid-19 in Pakistan, with one more death recorded on Monday, Xinhua news agency reported.

Coronavirus cases have risen steeply in Russia's capital Moscow over the past week, the city's health authorities said. Many of the infections are of the Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5. "Over the course of the past week, there has been a 57-percent rise in new cases of Covid-19 compared to the previous week," Moscow social services wrote on Telegram.

Ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's scheduled Patna visit, two Bihar ministers tested positive for Coronavirus on Tuesday morning.After testing positive, Deputy Chief Minister Tarkishore Prasad and state Energy Minister Bijendra Prasad Yadav isolated themselves and appealed to every person who came in contact with them to get tested for the infection.

Fourteen more people contracted Covid-19 in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, 11 more than the previous day, taking the tally to 10,253 on Tuesday, a health bulletin stated.There are 44 active cases and 11 more people recuperated in the past 24 hours, taking the recoveries to 10,080.The toll remained at 129 as there were no more deaths.The administration has tested 7,58,557 samples for COVID-19 so far.

The SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19, may survive on meat and fish products in the refrigerator or the freezer for up to 30 days, a study suggests.The research, recently published in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology, was conducted using chicken, beef, pork, and salmon, and surrogate viruses with spikes similar to those on SARS-CoV-2.

Hundreds of thousands of people were under lockdown in a small Chinese city Tuesday after just one case of Covid-19 was detected, as Beijing's strict no-tolerance virus strategy showed no sign of abating.China is the last major economy glued to a zero-Covid policy, crushing new outbreaks with snap lockdowns, forced quarantines and onerous travel curbs despite mounting public fatigue and damage to the economy.

Australian Health authorities warned that a projected looming spike in Covid-19 cases could overwhelm the hospital system.According to the modelling, the number of Australians being treated for Covid-19 in hospitals during the BA.

• Active cases 1,31,043
• Daily positivity rate 3.23%