Advocacy against the law like the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) is not a crime, former JNU student leader Umar Khalid told a Delhi court on Monday, asserting that the police pressured the witnesses to give statements in the riots conspiracy case.
As India witnessed the highest number of Covid cases in over four months, former All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) director Dr Randeep Guleria on Wednesday said the new XBB.1.16 variant could be driving the recent rise but emphasised there was no need for panic as long it does not cause severe illness and deaths.
Omicron is a 'deviant' from the COVID-19 pandemic progression script and so it must be postulated that two pandemics are going on side by side, one by the Delta and close relatives and the other by the latest variant of concern, said noted virologist Dr T Jacob John.
Two known Omicron sub-variants -- rather than any new variants -- have chiefly been responsible for the recent Covid-19 surge in China, according to a study of cases in Beijing published in The Lancet journal.
The WHO's move came nearly three weeks after India objected to the B.1.617 mutant of the novel coronavirus being termed an 'Indian Variant' in media reports with the Union Health Ministry pointing out that the UN's top health organ has not used the word 'Indian' for this strain in its document.
The phase 3 trial findings indicate that Covaxin induces a robust antibody response with no severe vaccine-related adverse events or deaths reported among the trial participants, the authors of the study said.
These 51 cases were detected from over 45,000 samples sequenced so far in the country.
The WHO said the four current 'Variants of Concern' being monitored closely - Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta - are widespread and have been detected in all WHO regions.
However, the "good news" is that the US vaccines are effective against the Delta variant, said Fauci, the head of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Vaccines Covishield and Covaxin work against SARS-CoV-2 variants Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta, while effectiveness tests against the Delta Plus variant is ongoing, the government said.
While virologists say theoretically the vaccine that works on Delta should work on the Delta Plus variant as well, more research is needed.
As of July 13, at least 111 countries, territories and areas have reported detection of the Delta variant, and this is expected to continue to increase, becoming the dominant variant globally in the coming months.
Children who previously had COVID-19 or the inflammatory condition MIS-C are not protected against the Omicron variant of coronavirus, according to a study which found vaccination, however, does afford protection.
The company claims that when the Nitric Oxide Nasal is sprayed over nasal mucosa it acts as a physical and chemical barrier against the virus.
The yet-to-be peer-reviewed study, posted recently on the preprint repository BioRxiv, found that the Alpha, Beta, Delta, and Omicron variants exhibited more than two-fold longer survival on plastic and skin surfaces, than the Wuhan strain.
The study also noted that the booster dosage of the company's COVID-19 vaccine Vaxzevria also increased the immune response to Beta, Delta, Alpha and Gamma SARS-CoV-2 variants.
'Unless we see four weeks of low and stable numbers with only minor fluctuations, we cannot call the valley as endemic just as yet'
It was on January 30, 2020 when a third-year medical student from Wuhan university tested positive for coronavirus, becoming the country's first COVID-19 patient, days after she had returned home following semester holidays.
Booster doses of COVID-19 vaccines are the easiest barrier that must be created immediately against Omicron, according to eminent virologist Dr T Jacob John, who noted that it may not seed the third wave of the pandemic, but breakthrough infections may be common due to the new variant.
The panel was informed that the economic impact of the second wave of viral infection was "asynchronous in its onset and wider in its spread particularly in rural hinterland", a source said.
"This antibody is both highly neutralising (meaning it works very well at low concentrations) and broadly neutralising (meaning it works against all variants)," said Michael S Diamond, a professor at Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis, US.
India reported an 18 per cent decrease in the new COVID-19 cases along with a 13 per cent decline in the number of deaths during the week of October 11 to 17, the World Health Organisation has said, highlighting that all the regions globally, except the European region, reported a fall in new weekly cases of the deadly virus.
'Using viral genomic sequences from 9,500 COVID-19 patients, the study found an increased number of infections among younger age groups (0-19 years) and women, a lower mean age for infection and symptomatic illness/hospitalisation, higher mortality and more frequent incidences of post-vaccination infections with Delta variant compared to the non-VOC (B.1) variant,' the WHO update said.
The B.1.617 variant was first detected in India and was divided in three lineages -- B.1.617.1, B.1.617.2 and B.1.617.3.
A total of 40,845 cases of black fungus or mucormycosis have been reported in the country so far, of which 31,344 are rhinocerebral in nature, and the death toll from the infections stands at 3,129, Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said.
As the Omicron strain spreads across the globe and questions on vaccine inequity dominate discussions, scientists are still scrambling to learn more about emerging variants of the deadly virus that has claimed millions of lives and crippled economies.
The global number of new cases has been increasing for more than a month, with over 4 million cases reported in the past week - July 26 to August 1, the update said.
'...signatures.' 'But such signatures are missing in this virus.'
'Wherever the Delta variant is spreading, and the population is not vaccinated, there is death and devastation.'
Ramesh Shrichand Damani says the best way to tackle the market in the near term is to remain invested.
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