COVID-19 News Updates

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.

The death toll due to the disease has climbed to 5,28,874 with 17 fatalities, which includes 9 deaths reconciled by Kerala, the data updated at 8 am showed.

The country's recovery rate stands at 98.76 per cent.

As of Wednesday morning, India's Covid-19 vaccination coverage exceeded 219.09 crore.

The Phase-two clinical trials were completed successfully in September 2022. In this phase, VINCOV-19 was administered to patients with moderate severity of Covid-19.

The recovery of 2,654 patients in the last 24 hours took the cumulative tally to 4,40,60,198. Consequently, India's recovery rate stands at 98.75 per cent.