COVID-19 News Updates

A strict surveillance is now being kept on the incoming visitors to the State, especially on the foreign returnees from other countries. The Centre had earlier asked States to mark separate isolation facilities for all the patients infected with the Omicron variant particularly in the designated Covid treatment facilities in their respective jurisdictions.

A decline of 317 cases has been recorded in the active COVID-19 caseload in a span of 24 hours.

The second worst hit country in t In its latest update on Terms of cases is India (34,710,628 infections and 476,135 deaths), followed by Brazil (22,201,221 infections and 617,271 deaths).

Asked about it, a senior Health Department official said: "We cannot confirm whether he is negative from a single test. At least two tests are required and we have collected his specimen today."

Odisha districts sharing their borders with Andhra Pradesh are on focus since the neighbouring state has already reported an Omicron case.

WHO Director General Tedros A. Ghebreyesus said that a total of 77 countries have reported Omicron cases so far but the reality is that this variant is probably yet to be detected in some countries.

The second worst hit country in terms of cases is India (34,703,644 infections and 475,888 deaths), followed by Brazil (22,195,775 infections and 616,970 deaths).

A decline of 1,431 cases has been recorded in the active COVID-19 caseload in a span of 24 hours.

Pfizer also released early data from a second clinical trial showing that the treatment reduced hospitalisations by around 70 per cent in around 600 standard-risk adults.

Besides South Africa, the Omicron strain has surged Covid cases in many countries including France, Russia, the US, and Israel. In the UK, it is expected to replace Delta as the dominant variant and the UK Health Security Agency estimates that the number of daily infections could touch 200,000.

Globally, the supply of vaccines has outmatched the demand and to keep up with the momentum, countries need to join and form some agreement in order to prepare standard rules for clinical trials and manufacturing of the vaccines.

While current Covid-19 vaccines use genes taken from the virus spike protein to encode antigens, which causes the immune system to produce antibodies, the new vaccine uses predictive methods to mimic the wider family of coronavirus antigens that researchers hope will give more protection.

It is expected that a large number of people working in Andhra Pradesh will return to Gajapati district this month due to the Omicron scare.

Amidst the scare of the new Covid-19 variant ‘Omicron’, Odisha Health & Family Welfare Director, Bijay Panigrahi on Tuesday (Dec 14), requested all beneficiaries who are yet to receive their first dose of the vaccine to get the shot as soon as possible.

Fully vaccinated people will not be that much critical if they are infected by Omicron. There is also a less chance of hospitalisation and death for them