COVID-19 News Updates

He also emphasised on door-to-door vaccination drive and directed to ensure that everyone adheres to the COVID guidelines released by the government. Mahapatra also ordered to take the violators into tasks and take stern action against them. 

AICC launched a "Covid justice campaign" with its chief Rahul Gandhi sharing a video of the affected families on Twitter and demanding a compensation of Rs 4 lakh for every household that has lost at least a member to Covid-19.

Cases of the new variants have been detected in the last one week in countries like Botswana, South Africa, Hong Kong and Israel.

A decrease of 1,328 cases has been recorded in the active COVID-19 caseload in a span of 24 hours.

US continues to be the worst-hit country with the world's highest number of cases and deaths at 48,201,840 and 776,517, respectively according to the CSSE.

Many of the changes have been found in variants such as Delta and Alpha, and are linked to heightened infectivity and the ability to evade infection-blocking antibodies.

Also, the government said four more countries are being added to the travel ban red list from 4 AM on Sunday: Angola, Mozambique, Malawi and Zambia. This adds to the six countries on the ban list since Friday South Africa, Botswana, Lesotho, Eswatini, Zimbabwe and Namibia.

Officials briefed the prime minister about the new Variant of Concern Omicron along with its characteristics and the impact seen in various countries, the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) said in a statement.

Countries must enhance surveillance and sequencing. They should assess the risk of importation through international travel based on updated information on circulating variants and response capacities, and take measures accordingly.

In the letter, Mishra stated that the Ministry of Home Affairs in March, 2020 made a commitment for disbursement of ex-gratia payment of Rs 4 lakh per deceased. Later, the Central government revised the notification and reduced the ex-gratia amount to Rs 50,000.

The variant which has been detected in South Africa, Botswana and Hong Kong has now forced several countries including India to initiate precautionary measures to prevent its spread.

To confirm its effectiveness, Kaufmann and Brunet-Ratnasingham tested the model on two independent cohorts of infected patients from during the first wave of the pandemic and then during the second and third waves.

With 10,967 recoveries, the total recoveries have surged up to 3,39,88,797. The recovery rate is currently at 98.34 per cent, the highest since March 2020, whereas the active cases stand at 1,07,019 after falling by 3,114 cases since Friday.

The second worst-hit country in terms of cases is India (34,555,431 infections and 467,468 deaths), followed by Brazil (22,067,630 infections and 613,957 deaths).

Of the 57 infected, swab samples of 21 students will be collected today and sent to Institute of Life Sciences in Bhubaneswar tomorrow for genome sequencing