COVID-19 News Updates

Earlier a couple of days back, the Health Department had written to all district Collectors to prepare micro planning to keep the rate of infection in check

According to Maria van Kerkhove from the WHO's Health Emergencies Program, BA.4 and BA.5 have been detected in a number of countries. The WHO is still evaluating the severity of the two new variants.

Survivors scored particularly poorly on tasks such as verbal analogical reasoning, a finding that supports the commonly-reported problem of difficulty finding words. They also showed slower processing speeds.

The data released at 8 am also showed that 31 fatalities were reported in a 24-hour span, taking the overall death toll to 5,23,920.

Unlike the Delta variant, previously considered to be the main variant of concern in most countries, the dynamics of the Omicron variant showed different characteristics, they said.

In the same period, the country reported 20 new Covid fatalities, taking the nationwide death toll to 5,23,889.

The US continues to be the worst-hit country with the world's highest number of cases and deaths at 81,444,332 and 993,999, respectively, according to the CSSE.

While existing vaccination can still reduce the risk of severe Covid disease, the variants can evade many of the neutralising antibodies that are the immune system's front line of defence.

The top court further directed the Centre to make public the data on adverse events of Covid-19 vaccination.

The active caseload also rose to 19,500, accounting for 0.05 per cent of the country's total positive cases.

US continues to be the worst-hit country with the world's highest number of cases and deaths at 81,365,218 and 993,733, respectively, according to the CSSE.

The daily positivity rate was recorded at 0.71 per cent and the weekly positivity rate at 0.68 per cent, according to the ministry.

The two doses of Sputnik V vaccine have separate compositions.

India on Saturday reported a marginal increase of 3,688 new Covid cases, against the 3,377 infections reported the previous day, the Union Health Ministry said.

India's drug regulator, the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) had approved Covovax for restricted use in emergency situations in adults on December 28 last year and in the 12-17 age group with certain conditions on March 9.