Foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning went on the offensive saying "we do not believe the entry restriction measures some countries have taken against China are science-based".
Five players and three team officials from Real Kashmir FC, one player each from Mohammedan Sporting, debutants Sreenidi Deccan FC and Aizawl FC returned positive in the tests, conducted in Kolkata, on Tuesday.
Days after it faced nationwide anti-government protests against its stringent zero-Covid policy, China in a major shift of its coronavirus response policies has announced that it will scrap quarantine for international travellers from January 8 as it reopens its borders and comes out of international isolation after nearly three years.
The yet-to-be peer-reviewed findings, recently posted on the preprint repository BioRxiv, show that the BA.2 sub variant may have features that make it as capable of causing serious illness as older coronavirus variants.
Officials said 387 passengers were aboard two flights from Toronto and Singapore on the day the country ended its strict COVID-19 restrictions for travellers.
The Chinese government on Saturday ordered the release of people detained over a host of coronavirus-related incidents, a day ahead of Beijing's plan to scrap its three-year-old stringently implemented zero-Covid policy.
The Omicron variant of COVID-19 is in the community transmission stage in India and it has also become dominant in multiple metros, where new cases have been rising exponentially, said Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium.
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.
A third dose of COVID-19 vaccine can provide up to 88 per cent protection against hospitalisation from infection by the Omicron variant of coronavirus, according to early results from studies conducted in the UK.
He said it took 15-25 days to recover for those who were infected with the Delta variant of the virus in March-April last year and even after recuperating, they complained about a number of problems.
Out of the total 190 samples, 180 (94.74 per cent) were found infected with Omicron, three with the Delta variant (1.58 per cent), one with Delta (0.53 per cent) and six with other strains of coronavirus (3.16 per cent), a Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) release said, citing test results of the ninth round of genome sequencing in the city.
The genomic consortium, citing global data, said there is now clear experimental and clinical data supporting very high immune escape potential of Omicron, which appears to be the major component of its growth advantage over Delta.
The weekly epidemiological update by WHO revealed the week of December 20-26 saw the global number of new COVID-19 cases increase by 11 per cent as compared to the previous week.
Two doses of Pfizer and AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines generate lower levels of antibodies against the Omicron variant of coronavirus, according to a study which suggests that those previously infected or vaccinated may be at an increased risk of infection.
There are around 7.5 million people aged 30 to 39, and 3.5 million of those are eligible for boosters from Monday, NHS England said.
Bajaj Finance was the top gainer in the Sensex pack, rising around 4 per cent, followed by Maruti, SBI, Bajaj Finserv, Sun Pharma and Asian Paints. NSE Nifty rallied 293.05 points to 17,469.75.
With variants cropping up at regular intervals, Jha acknowledged that they are a concern as a very rapid evolution of this virus is being seen over the time.
'Antiviral treatment will have no change. Spike protein change may affect the immunity protection.'
With Omicron, the new variant of SARS-CoV2, the third wave of coronavirus could hit the peak by February with cases likely to be reaching up to 1-1.5 lakh a day in the country, but it will be milder than the second wave, Manindra Agarwal, IIT scientist involved in the mathematical projection of trajectory of COVID-19, said.
The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), which monitors data related to the pandemic, said the sub-lineage known as BA.2 shows a low number of cases in the country, with the original Omicron lineage BA.1 still dominant.
Omicron very different from Delta, Beta COVID variants, says South African doctor Angelique Coetzee.
In its weekly report on the pandemic, the World Health Organisation said on Tuesday that the incidence of COVID-19 has increased globally, initially driven predominantly by transmission of the Delta variant, particularly in the European region.
Pfizer's chief executive Dr Albert Bourla told the BBC that he is of the view that annual vaccinations would be needed to maintain a "very high level of protection" against the deadly disease that has claimed over five million lives across the world.
The Omicron variant of Covid-19 adds new uncertainties to the global economic outlook but much will depend on its speed of transmission, hospitalisation and death rates, and also the effectiveness of vaccines, Moody's Analytics said on Monday. In its commentary titled 'Much to Learn About Omicronast', Moody's Analytics said although the variant appears to spread "remarkably quickly", it will be at least two more weeks before more will be known about this new variant. "The Omicron variant of COVID-19 adds new measures of uncertainty to the outlook for the global economy, although it is too soon to adequately quantify that risk.
The minister said he was not supposed to say anything officially as he was still in touch with the union health ministry and the ICMR officials.
In the advisory, Union Home Secretary Ajay Bhalla said States and Union Territories may consider imposing need based, local curbs and restrictions, to control the crowd during the festive season.
The new and highly transmissible Omicron variant of the deadly coronavirus has increased immune escape compared with the Delta variant and appears likely to become the dominant SARS-CoV-2 strain globally in 2022, according to Singapore-based experts.
If the vaccine is recommended for use as a booster against Omicron, it may significantly boost the demand for Covishield in India.
The percentage of patients with serious infections had halved from previous admissions.
Deaths are significantly less in the third wave of the Covid-19 pandemic in comparison to the second wave, and the current surge is not witnessing increase in severe illness or death following high vaccination uptake, the government said on Thursday.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Monday confirmed the UK's first death from the Omicron variant of coronavirus, the first known fatality from the highly transmissible variant of Covid-19 in the world.
As the Omicron variant of Sars-CoV-2 takes centrestage, vaccine makers in India are of the view that scaling up the existing vaccines to make them more effective is possible.
The fate of India's upcoming tour of South Africa amid the trepidation triggered by new COVID-19 variant Omicron will be addressed when the Board of Control for Cricket in India holds its 90th Annual General Meeting in Kolkata on Saturday.
The economic impact of the Omicron variant of COVID-19 on emerging economies will depend on a mix of government restrictions, public comfort with social interactions, and capacity of governments and central banks to provide additional policy support to the private sector, Moody's Investors Service said on Wednesday. The emergence of the new variant poses new risks to the global economic growth and inflation outlook, as concerns mount about the variant's health risks and several countries have imposed new travel restrictions in recent days. These restrictions will likely increase over the coming weeks until scientists learn more about the variant, it said.
A 'very large' number of Indians are likely to remain protected from Omicron or any other variant of COVID-19 and there is no need to panic, eminent virologist Dr Shahid Jameel has said.
The WHO has countries to enhance surveillance and sequencing efforts to better understand circulating SARS-CoV-2 variants, submit complete genome sequences and associated metadata to a publicly available database.
As many as 300 districts in India are reporting weekly COVID case positivity of more than five per cent, the Union government said on Wednesday as it warned against treating the infection due to the Omicron variant as common cold and urged people to get vaccinated.
It was women who unambiguously bore the brunt of the lockdown joblessness, says Kanika Datta.
The reduced severity of the Omicron variant is good news for now, but it is the result of an 'evolutionary mistake' and does not indicate that the virus which causes COVID-19 is becoming less virulent, a leading Indian-origin scientist from the University of Cambridge warned on Thursday.
He said though there is a spike in new cases, the situation is under control as not many people are developing severe disease or require hospitalisation.
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