COVID-19 News Updates

The meeting comes a day after Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya reviewed the situation and asked people to follow Covid-appropriate behaviour, including wearing masks in crowded places, and getting vaccinated.

Addressing the media here on Wednesday, Michael Ryan, Executive Director of the WHO's Health Emergencies Programme, said: "In China, what's been reported is relatively low numbers of cases in ICUs, but anecdotally ICUs are filling up.

Three cases of Omicron subvariant BF.7, apparently the strain driving China's current surge of Covid cases, have been detected in India so far, including one in Odisha, forcing the State to make robust arrangements for genome sequencing to detect the subvariant.

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Taking to Twitter, the Minister said: In view of the rising cases of Covid19 in some countries, reviewed the situation with experts and officials today.

The first case of BF.7 in India was detected in October by Gujarat Biotechnology Research Centre. So far, two cases have been reported from Gujarat while one case has been reported from Odisha

Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan, in the letter, has said that such an exercise will enable timely detection of newer variants, if any, circulating in the country and will facilitate undertaking of requisite public health measures for the same.

The latest reported Covid-19 deaths in the capital were the first official fatalities since the government abandoned its stringent anti-virus controls earlier this month following widespread protests against the zero-Covid policy.

The team from Spain's Universitat Rovira i Virgili, in conjunction with the Pere Virgili Health Research Institute, developed this method, which is based on artificial intelligence (AI) techniques.

"We're hopeful that at some point next year, we will be able to say that Covid-19 is no longer a global health emergency," he said.

The announcement came amid a declining number of coronavirus cases in the state.

The scientists suggested that combining this antibody with others in a cocktail might reduce the chances of the virus becoming antibody-treatment resistant.

A decrease of 596 cases has been recorded in the active covid caseload in a span of 24 hours, the data updated at 8 am stated.

The active caseload stands at 20,821 cases accounting for 0.05 per cent of the country's total positive cases.