India logs 2,483 fresh Covid cases, active caseload dips to 15,636

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India logs 2,483 fresh Covid cases, active caseload dips to 15,636

India reported 2,483 fresh Covid cases in the past 24 hours, a marginal decline against the previous day’s 2,541 infections, the Union Health Ministry said on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, the active caseload of the country has reported a decline at 15,636 cases, accounting for 0.04 percent of the country’s total positive cases.

In the same period, 1,399 Covid deaths were reported. Of the total deaths, 1,347 took place in Assam, said the ministry. With fresh fatalities, the nationwide death toll has mounted to 5,23,622.

The recovery of 1,970 patients in the last 24 hours took the cumulative tally to 4,25,23,311. Consequently, India’s recovery rate stands at 98.75 percent.

Also in the same period, a total of 4,49,197 tests were conducted across the country, increasing the overall to 83.54 crores.

While the weekly positivity rate stood at 0.58 percent, the daily positivity rate reported a considerable decline to 0.55 percent.

As of Tuesday morning, India’s Covid-19 vaccination coverage exceeded 187.95 crores, achieved via 2,30,89,167 sessions.

Over 2.70 crore adolescents have been administered a first dose of Covid-19 jab since the beginning of the vaccination drive for this age bracket.

Global Covid caseload tops 508.6 mn

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Global Covid caseload tops 508.6 mn

The global coronavirus caseload has topped 508.6 million, while the deaths have surged to more than 6.21 million and vaccinations to over 11.22 billion, according to Johns Hopkins University.

In its latest update on Saturday morning, the University’s Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) revealed that the current global caseload and the death toll stood at 508,675,438 and 6,215,433, respectively, while the total number of vaccine doses administered increased to 11,223,233,693.

The US continues to be the worst-hit country with the world’s highest number of cases and deaths at 80,952,268 and 991,166, respectively, according to the CSSE.

India accounts for the second-highest caseload at 43,052,425.

The other countries with over 10 million cases are Brazil (30,338,697) France (28,354,529), Germany (24,141,333), the UK (22,106,300), Russia (17,855,661), South Korea (16,830,469), Italy (16,008,181), Turkey (15,013,616), Spain (11,736,893) and Vietnam (10,544,324).

The nations with a death toll of over 100,000 are Brazil (662,802), India (522,116), Russia (367,036), Mexico (324,033), Peru (212,704), the UK (173,984), Italy (162,466), Indonesia (156,040), France (145,982), Iran (140,919), Colombia (139,759), Germany (134,155), Argentina (128,344), Poland (115,926), Spain (103,721) and South Africa (100,286).

Chronic disease patients in Ukraine unable to access health care: WHO

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Chronic disease patients in Ukraine unable to access health care: WHO

One in three households with at least one patient with a chronic condition is unable to secure medication and care in Ukraine, due to the ongoing invasion by Russia, according to a new survey released by World Health Organization (WHO) on Friday.

The war, which began on February 24 and is continuing since, has devastated the health and well-being of millions of civilians, and severely impaired the Ukrainian health system.

The nationwide health needs assessment, conducted in partnership with Premise, surveyed about 1,000 households.

The preliminary result shows that two out of five households (39 percent) have at least one member with a chronic illness, such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, or cancer.

Less than a third (30 percent) of respondents sought out health-care services recently; of those, 39 percent cited the security situation as the main reason, while 27 percent reported that no health-care services were available at all in their area.

Most households (70 percent) surveyed are sheltering in their own homes at this time, while 11 percent are staying with friends and family members in relatively safer areas, 8 percent are on the move within Ukraine, and 3 percent are in a shelter or camp for internally displaced people.

“Two months into the war, our findings show the urgent need for continued health system support in Ukraine,” said Dr. Jarno Habicht, WHO Representative and Head of the WHO Country Office in Ukraine, in a statement.

Although the WHO has been able to reach nearly 7.5 million people over the past eight weeks with life-saving supplies, equipment, and medicines, the agency said it is still unable to reach some of the hardest-hit areas in the east where the health system has all but collapsed.

“We have received reports, for instance, that nearly all health facilities and hospitals in Luhansk oblast are either damaged or destroyed, and the situation is critical in several others. It is vital that we gain access so we can assess health needs and move vital supplies into affected areas, including Mariupol. Civilians have a right to health, even in times of war,” Habicht said.

Ukraine’s health system is facing multiple challenges. The risk of infectious diseases, and increasingly waterborne diseases, is significant, and routine immunisation, including Covid-19 vaccination, is greatly diminished because of the war.

Access to reproductive, maternal, and antenatal care, as well as mental health care, is severely impacted due to security concerns, restricted mobility, broken supply chains, and mass displacement. And health care continues to come under attack, with more than 160 verified incidents since February 24.

According to the United Nations, more than 12 million people have been forcibly displaced by the Russian invasion: 7.1 million people are displaced within Ukraine and more than 5 million refugees are outside Ukraine. Another 2.9 million are considering leaving their homes due to the war.

India reports 2,451 new Covid-19 cases, 54 deaths

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India reports 2,451 new Covid-19 cases, 54 deaths

In the last 24 hours, India reported 2,451 new Covid-19 cases, a marginal increase against the 2,380 infections registered the previous day, the Union Health Ministry said on Friday.

Also in the same period, an additional 54 Covid fatalities increased the nationwide death toll to 522,116.

The number of India’s active caseloads has increased to 14,241, accounting for 0.03 percent of the country’s total positive cases.

The recovery of 1,589 patients in the last 24 hours took the cumulative tally to 4,25,16,068. Consequently, India’s recovery rate stands at 98.75 percent.

Also in the same period, a total of 4,48,939 tests were conducted across the country, increasing the overall to 83.38 crores.

While the weekly positivity rate stood at 0.47 percent, the daily positivity rate reported a considerable spike to 0.55 percent.

As of Friday morning, India’s Covid-19 vaccination coverage exceeded 187.26 crores, achieved via 2,29,29,662 sessions.

Covid-19: Telangana urges people to be on alert

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Covid-19: Telangana urges people to be on alert

With Covid-19 cases rising in some states, health authorities in Telangana on Thursday issued an alert and advised people to adopt Covid appropriate behavior.

Director of Public Health G. Srinivasa Rao said though the positivity rate in Telangana has not gone up, people should follow precautionary measures like wearing masks in crowded places.

He told reporters that people need to be cautious especially for the next three months as thousands of marriages take place in the April-June period. During the summer, many people travel distances, and families and friends come together. “Hence, there is a need to adopt Covid appropriate behavior like wearing of masks in crowded places,” he said.

He said while there was no need for panic, people should be alert in view of the rise in cases in neighboring states.

Rao said for Telangana to avoid a situation being seen in some states like Delhi, Punjab, and Haryana, people should take precautions and all eligible individuals should take vaccines when due.

“We don’t know whether a fourth wave will come or not but we should be in a position to come out of a possible fourth wave and for this vaccination is a must,” he said.

The official claimed that the state could emerge from the third wave with minimum loss due to cent percent vaccination. He said 80 percent of vaccinated people have developed antibodies.

He said the sero survey conducted in the state in January-February revealed that the seropositivity rate in the state is 92.9 percent. He cited this as a strong indication that the state may not see the fourth wave but cautioned people against being complacent.

He said while the r-value or the virus reproduction rate is over one percent in states like Delhi and Haryana, it is just 0.5 percent in Telangana.

Claiming that the Covid situation in the state is completely under control for the last six weeks, Rao said barring Hyderabad no other district is reporting more than 10 cases every day.

He said the state has achieved good success in vaccination with 106 percent of the population taking the first dose and 100 percent both the doses.

He said all people above 60 years should take a booster dose, nine months after taking the second dose. People in the 18-59 age group should take booster doses in private hospitals. He also urged people to ensure vaccination of all children in the 12-17 age group.

New Omicron sub-variant seen behind surge in Delhi’s Covid cases

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New Omicron sub-variant seen behind surge in Delhi’s Covid cases

A new Omicron sub-variant may be the reason behind the sudden surge of Covid cases in Delhi, which witnessed an over 60 percent rise in fresh Covid cases on Wednesday at 1,009 cases.

According to a source from the Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium (INSACOG), Omicron sub-lineage BA.2.12 was detected in several samples sequenced from the national capital. The source said that some other sub-variants have also been found that could be the reason behind the surge in the city. He added further that the new Covid mutant also seems capable of causing respiratory problems and reinfection who have previously been infected by Covid.

India has seen a rise in Covid cases over the last few weeks with some parts seeing more cases. On Thursday, the country reported 2,380 fresh Covid infections in the last 24 hours, against 2,067 cases recorded on Wednesday. In the same period, the nation has also recorded 56 Covid deaths, taking the total number of deaths to 522,062, said the Union Health Ministry on Thursday morning.

The Weekly Positivity Rate in the country currently stands at 0.43 percent, while the Daily Positivity rate has reported a considerable rise to 0.53 percent. However, Delhi’s positivity rate stands at 5.70 percent as per the health bulletin issued on Wednesday.

Novavax’s vax targeting Covid and flu shows promise

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Novavax’s vax targeting Covid and flu shows promise

Novavax has developed a new vaccine that targets both Covid-19 and the flu and triggers an immune response similar to its stand-alone shots against each virus, the company said.

According to Chief Medical Officer Filip Dubovsky, the company’s early phase clinical trial found that up to 25 micrograms of the Covid formulation, combined with up to 35 micrograms of the flu formulation, triggered a promising level of protective antibodies, CNBC reported.

“What we demonstrated in this study is we were able to get the immune responses really comparable to what the individual vaccines did prior to the combination,” Dubovsky was quoted as saying.

Unlike mRNA vaccines, Novavax’s shots fully synthesize the virus spike outside the human body. The genetic code for the spike is put into a baculovirus that infects insect cells, which then produce copies of the spike that are purified and extracted.

The spike copy, which can’t replicate or cause Covid, is injected into people to induce an immune response against the virus, the report said.

The vaccine also uses an adjuvant, also used in vaccines against malaria and shingles, which contains an extract purified from the bark of a tree in South America, to induce a broader immune response.

Novavax’s stand-alone Covid shots consist of 5 micrograms of the spike copy and 50 micrograms of the adjuvant. The same technology has been used for its stand-alone flu vaccine candidate, which targets four strains of the virus.

In the phase one trial for its new vaccine, participants had a median age of 59 and all of them had previously received Covid vaccines. Novavax presented the data at the World Vaccine Congress in Washington, DC, on Wednesday.

To confirm the findings, Novavax aims to launch a phase two trial this year, and a phase three trial on efficacy during the 2023 flu season at the earliest, Dubovsky said.

Even as public health experts expect Covid to become a seasonal respiratory virus similar to the flu, vaccine makers are racing to develop combination shots targeting both viruses.

“Combination vaccines are an attractive public health intervention,” Dubovsky said. “You are hitting two life-threatening diseases in one medical contact, giving a single vaccination.”

While Novavax does not currently have an authorized Covid vaccine in the US, it had in January asked the Food and Drug Administration to authorize its Covid vaccine. However, the FDA is still reviewing Novavax’s application, Dubovsky said.

Fully vaccinated Spanish woman infected with Omicron 20 days-post Delta

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Fully vaccinated Spanish woman infected with Omicron 20 days-post Delta

A 31-year-old woman in Spain caught the Omicron infection just 20 days after the Delta variant, in what is claimed to be the shortest known gap between infections, according to researchers.

However, in a similar case, a rare breakthrough infection was reported in a vaccinated 61-year-old Delhi doctor in 2021, who contracted the Alpha and Delta variants within 19 days.

The Spanish woman, who was a healthcare worker, first tested positive for the infection on December 20, 2021, in a PCR test during staff screening at her place of work.

She was fully vaccinated and had received a booster shot 12 days earlier.

The patient, who didn’t develop any symptoms, self-isolated for 10 days before returning to work.

On January 10, 2022, just 20 days after first testing positive, she developed a cough, and fever and felt generally unwell, and had undergone another PCR test which was also positive.

Whole-genome sequencing showed that the patient had been infected by two different strains of SARS-CoV-2 — in December it was the Delta variant, and the second in January was the Omicron variant.

“This case highlights the potential of the Omicron variant to evade the previous immunity acquired either from a natural infection with other variants or from vaccines,” said Gemma Recio, of Institut Catala de Salut, Tarragona, Spain.

In other words, people who have had Covid-19 cannot assume they are protected against reinfection, even if they have been fully vaccinated, Recio added.

However, she said together the previous infection and vaccination partially protect the patient against severe disease and hospitalisation.

“This case also underscores the need to carry out genomic surveillance of viruses in infections in those who are fully vaccinated and in reinfections. Such monitoring will help detect variants with the ability to partially evade the immune response,” Recio noted.

The case report will be presented at this year’s European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases to be held in Lisbon, Portugal, from April 23-26.

A Delhi doctor, Veena Aggarwal was thrice infected with Covid-19 — contracting both the Alpha and Delta variants after vaccination.

Aggarwal first tested positive on August 16, 2020, and was asymptomatic. She received her first dose of the Covishield vaccine on February 1, 2021, followed by the second dose on March 15, 2021.

On April 12, she tested positive for the second time and had symptoms such as acute abdominal pain, fever, myalgia, and fatigue. Within 19 days, on May 3, she tested positive for the third time.

The infection resulted in hypoxia, hospitalization, and illness lasting seven weeks. Whole-genome sequencing showed the second infection was caused by the Alpha variant and the third by the Delta variant.

Her case reported in the peer-reviewed medical journal Frontiers in Medicine identified a rare breakthrough infection in 19 days and also confirmed it as reinfection, presenting the first such documented case of two reinfections and two breakthrough infections.

New versions of Omicron that may outpace BA.2 found

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New versions of Omicron that may outpace BA.2 found

Scientists have found 21 viral offspring linked with BA.2 that may outpace the most successful subvariant of the Omicron variant so far.

BA.2 has been picking up mutations, sometimes shifting into sleeker and, incredibly, even faster versions of itself, media reported.

While most of the mutations look like underachievers, and of little consequence, two of these offshoots — BA.2.12.1 and BA.2.12 — have been fueling a rise in Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations in central New York.

And one of them, BA.2.12.1, is outpacing BA.2 in other regions, too, the report said.

According to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, BA.2.12.1 caused 19 percent of new Covid infections in the US last week, up from an estimated 11 percent of cases the week before.

The speed at which BA.2.12.1 is outpacing BA.2 is roughly as fast as BA.2 outcompeted its cousin BA.1, Trevor Bedford, an epidemiologist and genomic scientist at the University of Washington’s School of Public Health, was quoted as saying.

Though BA.2 is still very much around, it’s lost some ground. Last week, it caused an estimated 74 percent of Covid-19 cases, according to the CDC data, down from nearly 76 percent the week before.

Together, BA.2 and BA.2.12.1 accounted for an estimated 93 percent of new Covid cases in the US last week.

“BA.2.12.1 has increased rapidly in proportion in the US compared to other BA.2 sublineages,”, especially in the region that includes New York and New Jersey, CDC spokesperson Kristen Nordlund was quoted as saying.

Last week, the New York State Department of Health alerted residents to the new sublineages, warning that they were spreading about 25 percent faster than BA.2 and were causing Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations to increase, particularly in the central part of the state.

It urged New Yorkers to “act swiftly” to consider wearing masks, to get booster vaccine doses, to get tested if they had symptoms and to seek treatment if infected, the report said.

Officials are concerned about BA.2 offshoots because they have swapped pieces of their spike proteins at key locations called L452Q and S704L.

“And those mutations are allowing the virus to enter cells faster and also contributing to evading antibody responses that are generated from vaccination or infection,” said Andy Pekosz of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Two other Omicron sub-variants, BA.4 and BA.5, have begun to circulate at low levels in other parts of the world, including South Africa, Botswana, Germany, and Denmark. They also have mutations at 452, among others.

“What we really just don’t know right now is how much those mutations are going to be contributing to increased spread or increased disease severity,” Pekosz said. “That’s something that’s going to take some time for us to figure out.”

India records steep rise in Covid cases, logs 2,067 infections

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India records steep rise in Covid cases, logs 2,067 infections

India registered a sharp rise in Covid-19 cases as it recorded 2,067 infections in the past 24 hours, against 1,247 on the previous day, the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare said on Wednesday.

In the same period, 40 Covid deaths were reported, pushing the death toll to 522,006.

Active cases rose to 12,340 which is 0.03 percent of the country’s total Covid infections.

A total of 1,547 patients have recovered in the same time span and the cumulative tally of recovered patients since the beginning of the pandemic is now at 4,25,13,248. Consequently, India’s recovery rate stands at 98.76 percent.

Also in the same period, a total of 4,21,183 tests were conducted across the country. India has so far conducted over 83.29 crore cumulative tests.

The weekly positivity rate in the country currently stands at 0.38 percent, while the daily positivity rate has reported a considerable rise at 0.49 percent.

On the vaccination front, COVID-19 vaccination coverage has exceeded 186.90 crores as per provisional reports till 7 a.m. This has been achieved through 2,28,31,901 sessions.

Over 2.50 crore adolescents have been administered with the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine since the beginning of vaccination drive for this age bracket.

More than 20.33 crore balance and unutilized Covid vaccine doses are still available with the states and UTs.

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