COVID-19 News Updates

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.

"There is a need for this kind of low-cost detection system," said researcher Lance Hubbard from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in the US.

This is because the new variant quickly bypasses the immunity that a person has developed through a natural infection with an earlier variant or even if the complete course of the vaccines are taken, he added.

"Omicron and its sub-lineages continue to be the dominant variant in India. BA.2 and its descendent lineages, in particular, BA.2.75 has been mostly found over the last week in different parts of India," the INSACOG said

The daily positivity rate was recorded at 1.24 per cent and the weekly positivity rate was recorded at 0.99 per cent, according to the health ministry.

Swaminathan said they are also tracking derivatives of BA.5 and BA.1, which are also more transmissible and immune-evasive.

The number of recoveries increased to 4,40,82,064, while the case fatality rate was recorded at 1.19 per cent.

According to Fox News, a variant, a combination of Omicron and the original virus in Wuhan, killed 80 per cent of the mice infected with it, the university said.

The death toll climbed to 5,28,905 with 10 more fatalities, which included four deaths reconciled by Kerala, the data stated.

The CDC had previously bundled BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 with their shared parent BA.5 in its weekly "Nowcast" estimates.