COVID-19 News Updates

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

Further, Poonawalla said there was enough data to show that the vaccines will work and protect the children against the infectious disease.

"Out of total 38 admitted in the hospital, 35 have tested positive for Covid and five of these Omicron positive and three are suspected."

Elsewhere, an Israeli study published on Saturday also found that a three-dose course of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine provided significant protection against the omicron variant.

A decline of 2,463 cases was recorded in the active COVID-19 caseload in a span of 24 hours.

The second worst hit country in terms of cases is India (34,697,860 infections and 475,636 deaths), followed by Brazil (22,177,059 infections and 616,457 deaths).

Several students of Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya (KGBV) in Kaptipada of Mayurbhanj district reportedly tested positive for Covid-19 virus triggering fears. Prior to this, as many as 10 students of a government run girl’s school at Bolangir district had tested positive for COVID-19, while in Bhubaneswar two students of Capital High School and more than 10 teachers of Kendriya Vidyalaya-1 tested positive.

After Omicron variant of Covid-19 was detected in the neighboring state of Andhra Pradesh, the Odisha Directorate of Medical Education & Training Chief, Rama Raman Mohanty on Monday (Dec 13) allayed fears and assured that the State is prepared.

The UK has seen its first death from Omicron, even as the latest variant of the coronavirus is expected to comprise 50 per cent of the cases in London by Tuesday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Monday.

41 lakh people of the State are yet to receive their first dose of vaccine. 

Amid the rising scare of the Omicron variant, State Health & Family Welfare Director, Bijay Panigrahi on Monday (Dec 13) informed that as many as 41 lakh people in Odisha are yet to take their first dose of the Covid vaccine. This accounts for almost 13 per cent of the total beneficiaries in the state.