Coronavirus Omicron News Highlights: As Covid cases decline, Centre asks states to end additional restrictions

? Today's Covid numbers: Delhi (766 cases), Mumbai (255 cases), Bengaluru (835 cases), Chennai (296 cases), Kolkata (58 cases)

Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan has written to all States/UTs, asking them to review and amend or end additional Covid-19 restrictions as the pandemic in the country shows a sustained declining trend.

Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan writes to all States/UTs, asks them to review and amend or end additional COVID19 restrictions as the pandemic in the country shows a sustained declining trend pic.twitter.com/7iTlZ8tF4q

— ANI (@ANI) February 16, 2022

Assam Governor Jagdish Mukhi has said that higher education institutions should develop innovative ways to combat the novel Coronavirus and its various mutations which have dealt a severe blow to both the health and wealth of humans.

Addressing the second convocation of Bodoland University at Kokrajhar on Tuesday, the Governor appealed to both the teaching and student fraternity of the university to work out an interface between the regional and global ideas to develop an innovative approach to combat the pandemic. (PTI)

As Covid-19 cases continue to drop across the country, the Punjab government has ordered the reopening of all schools for classes pre-primary to 12. 

On the occasion of the Delhi Police's Raising Day parade, Home Minister Amit Shah congratulated the police force for the role it played during the Covid pandemic. "I congratulate Delhi Police for the role it played during the Covid pandemic and the Delhi riots, particularly for fairly and strictly investigating the riots," he said. (ANI)

Andaman and Nicobar Islands recorded four new Covid-19 cases, pushing the tally in the union territory to 9,985, a health department official said on Wednesday. Eighteen more people recovered from Covid-19, taking the total number of recoveries to 9,753, he said.

The archipelago now has 103 active Covid-19 cases, the official said. The Covid-19 death toll remained at 129 as no fresh fatality was reported in the last 24 hours, he said. (PTI)

India recorded 30,615 new Covid-19 cases in the last 24 hours ending at 8 am on Wednesday, marking a slight rise since yesterday’s 27,409 infections. Meanwhile, 514 coronavirus patients succumbed to the deadly disease. The country's active caseload is now at 3,70,240.

• Active cases stand at 0.87%
• Recovery Rate currently at 97.94%
• 82,988 recoveries in the last 24 hours increases total recoveries to 4,18,43,446
• 30,615 new cases recorded in the last 24 hours
• Daily positivity rate (2.45%)
• Weekly Positivity Rate (3.32%)

Good morning! Follow this space for the latest Covid updates. 

Maharashtra on Tuesday recorded 2,831 fresh Covid-19 cases, including 351 Omicron infections, and 35 fatalities, taking the tally of infections to 78,47,746 and the death toll to 1,43,451, the state health department said.

The state is now left with 30,547 active cases after 8,695 patients were discharged in the last 24 hours, which raised the tally of overall recoveries to 76,69,772. (PTI)

Delhi on Tuesday reported 756 fresh Covid-19 cases and five deaths, while the positivity rate stood at 1.52 per cent, according to data shared by the city health department.

With this, the national capital's case count increased to 18,52,662 and the death toll climbed to 26,081, the latest health bulletin stated.

The number of Covid-19 tests conducted a day ago stood at 49,792, it said. (PTI)

The cumulative Covid-19 vaccine doses administered in the country reached nearly 174 crores on Tuesday, the Union Health Ministry said.

More than 37 lakh (37,69,847) vaccine doses were administered till 7 pm on Tuesday.

So far, more than 1.79 crores (1,79,58,242) precaution doses have been given to healthcare workers, frontline workers and those aged 60 and above with co-morbidities.

The daily vaccination tally is expected to increase with the compilation of the final reports for the day by late night. (PTI)

Italy reported 70,852 Covid-19 related cases on Tuesday, against 28,630 the day before, the health ministry said, while the number of deaths rose to 388 from 281.

Italy has registered 151,684 deaths linked to Covid-19 since its outbreak emerged in February 2020, the second-highest toll in Europe after Britain and the eighth highest in the world. The country has reported 12.2 million cases to date.

Patients in hospital with Covid-19 - not including those in intensive care - stood at 15,602 on Tuesday, down from 16,050 a day earlier. (Reuters)

Popular K-pop band BTS member V has tested positive for coronavirus, their management agency confirmed on Tuesday.

In a statement posted on fan community forum Weverse, the band's management company BIGHIT said V, whose full name is Kim Tae-hyung, visited the hospital Tuesday afternoon "after experiencing a mild sore throat and took the PCR test. He was diagnosed with COVID-19 tonight".

The 26-year-old singer has completed two rounds of Covid-19 vaccinations and has no extraordinary symptoms other than "a mild fever and sore throat. He is currently undergoing treatment at home while waiting for further guidelines from the health care authorities," the agency shared in its statement. (PTI)

Long Covid is less likely to affect vaccinated people than unvaccinated people, a new review of 15 studies by the UK Health Security Agency released on Tuesday has concluded.

UKHSA said the people who received two doses of Pfizer-BioNTech, AstraZeneca or Moderna vaccine, or one dose of the single-shot J&J vaccine, were around half as likely to develop symptoms of long Covid compared to the unvaccinated.

"These studies add to the potential benefits of receiving a full course of the Covid-19 vaccination," said Dr Mary Ramsay, head of immunisation at UKHSA.

"Vaccination is the best way to protect yourself from serious symptoms when you get infected and may also help to reduce the longer-term impact." (Reuters)

The traders' body in Delhi on Tuesday demanded scrapping of the DDMA's graded response action plan (GRAP) for Covid management ahead of the panel's proposed meeting later this week to discuss further relaxations amid a significant improvement in the pandemic situation here.

The GRAP devised by the Delhi Disaster Management Authority came into force in August last year, stipulating measures to be taken by the government as per positivity rate and bed occupancy for locking and unlocking of various activities.

The Chamber of Trade and Industry (CTI), an association of traders in Delhi, has demanded that the DDMA should scrap the GRAP, saying unless it goes, "the sword of restrictions" will keep on hanging over their heads. (PTI)

After dropping below 10,000, the daily Covid-19 cases in Kerala saw a marginal increase with the state on Tuesday recording 11,776 fresh infections which raised the total caseload to 64,28,148. The southern state had reported 8,989 fresh cases on Monday.

Kerala, on Tuesday, also reported 304 deaths which pushed the total fatalities in Kerala to 62,681, according to a government release.

Of the deaths, 20 were reported in the last 24 hours, 154 were those which occurred in the last few days but were not recorded due to late receipt of documents and 130 were designated as Covid-19 deaths after receiving appeals based on the new guidelines of the Centre and the directions of the Supreme Court, the release said. (PTI)

Amid a decline in daily Covid cases in Delhi, the number of patients under home isolation here has gradually fallen to 2,361, a steep drop of 80 per cent in the last 14 days, according to official data.

The number of home isolation cases on February 1 was 12,312. The number of containment zones, which were also slowly falling in this period, also registered a dip in its count to 16,154 on February 14 from 37,116 on February 1, according to official figures shared by the health department. On February 14, the home isolation cases count stood at 2,361, registering a fall of 80 per cent in the figures in the last two weeks.

The number of daily cases in Delhi has been on the decline after touching the record high of 28,867 on January 13. The city had recorded a positivity rate of 30.6 per cent on January 14, the highest during the ongoing wave of the pandemic. (PTI)

Assam withdrew all Covid-related restrictions on Tuesday reverting to the situation that existed before the nationwide lockdown on March 25, 2020, following the outbreak of the disease, officials said.

They claimed that Assam is the first state in the country to withdraw all Covid restrictions.

All restrictions were lifted from 6 am on Tuesday with night curfew and curbs on socio-religious gatherings, educational institutions and others withdrawn, the officials said.

Wearing masks, maintaining social distance, regular hand washing and use of hand sanitisers at places of the public gathering are mandatory and will remain in force until further orders, according to a notification issued by Chief Secretary Jishnu Baruah. (PTI)

The head of the World Health Organization's Europe office said Tuesday that health officials are turning their attention to growing rates of Covid-19 infection in Eastern Europe, where six countries -- including Russia and Ukraine -- have seen a doubling in case counts over the last two weeks.

Dr Hans Kluge said the 53-country region, which stretches to former Soviet republics into central Asia, has now tallied more than 165 million confirmed coronavirus cases and 1.8 million deaths linked to the pandemic _ including 25,000 in the last week alone.

"Today, our focus is towards the east of the WHO European region," Kluge said in Russian at a media briefing, pointing to a surge in the highly transmissible omicron variant. "Over the past two weeks, cases of Covid-19 have more than doubled in six countries in this part of the region (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, the Russian Federation, and Ukraine)." "As anticipated, the omicron wave is moving east: 10 eastern Member States have now detected this variant," he said.

Omicron, however, is milder than previous variants and health care systems in most countries around the world aren't under strain.

Kluge sought to put an emphasis on improving vaccination rates, which have lagged in Eastern Europe compared to the rest of the region. He said less than 40% of people over age 60 in Bosnia, Bulgaria, Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan have completed a full Covid-19 vaccine series. (AP)

Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam on Tuesday ruled out a citywide lockdown to fight Covid-19, but a surge of infections meant she could not "preclude" the possibility of postponing next month's chief executive election.

Lam, who has not confirmed whether she will seek another five-year term as head of the Chinese ruled city, said her government's response to the outbreak had not been satisfactory with hospitals and medical staff overwhelmed.

Daily infections have surged by about 20 times over the past two weeks. Health authorities reported 1,619 infections on Tuesday, a new daily record with around 5,400 preliminary positive cases.

"There are no plans for a widespread city lockdown," Lam told a news conference. (Reuters)

Singapore's biennial air show opened Tuesday on a smaller scale than before the pandemic, even as the aviation sector gears up for a recovery two years after coronavirus outbreaks nearly paralysed air travel.

The three-day air show began Tuesday. Members of the general public are not allowed, but about 600 exhibitors are showing their products and services. That's down from 930 during the last show in February 2020, when coronavirus cases were just beginning to rise.

Experts say the aviation market is poised for recovery, with defense spending on the rise and commercial aviation picking up despite the latest wave of omicron-driven infections. (AP)

Mild- to moderate-intensity exercise for 90 minutes after getting a flu or Covid-19 vaccine may boost the levels of antibodies in the body, according to a study.

The findings, published in the journal Brain, Behavior, and Immunity, could directly benefit people with a range of fitness levels.

Participants who cycled on a stationary bike or took a brisk walk for an hour-and-a-half after vaccination produced more antibodies in the following four weeks compared to those who did not exercise. (PTI)

New York City fired more than a thousand workers who failed to comply with the city's Covid-19 vaccine mandate, the mayor's office said.

The 1,430 workers who lost their jobs represent less than one per cent of the 3,70,000-person city workforce and are far fewer terminations than expected before a Friday deadline to get the shots.

The city sent notices in late January to up to 4,000 workers, saying they had to show proof they got at least two doses of the vaccine or else they'd lose their jobs. Three-quarters of those workers had already been on leave without pay for months, having missed an earlier deadline for getting vaccinated in order to stay on the job. (AP)

As Covid-19 cases and positivity rate declined steadily across the city, the Service Department of the Delhi Government has withdrawn the “Cancellation of Leave” order issued on January 5 to manage the coronavirus pandemic situation.

When Omicron cases increased and crossed the 1,000 mark, the Delhi Government on January 5 cancelled all granted leaves for all the officers, officials and staff deployed in its departments and schools. The order was issued to manage the Covid situation and arrangements such as vaccination, testings, oxygen, hospitals and others things related to the pandemic in the city. Read more

A special school for children with genetic and intellectual disabilities, housed in a Nizam-era mansion on the campus of the Institute of Genetics and Hospital for Genetic Diseases in Begumpet, located only a stone’s throw away from the Chief Minister’s official residence, was reduced to a film shooting location, courtesy the Covid-19 pandemic. Through these tough months, however, the teachers kept the students engaged in the curriculum through virtual classes via WhatsApp.

“It could take a full year for such a child to do something as simple as brushing their teeth by themselves. What we do is identify their personal, social, and academic goals as per their age. Short-term goals are assessed based on their needs, personal skills, and IQ. If not practised regularly, they would forget everything and we have to start again from scratch,” says Prashanti, one of the three teachers at the school, explaining why it was necessary to continue with online education for her students with special needs. Read more

Unless India sees four weeks of low and stable numbers of COVID-19 cases with only minor fluctuations, the disease cannot be considered to be entering the endemic stage, noted virologist Dr T Jacob John said.

He also said the endemic phase of COVID-19 is expected to last many months and it is " most unlikely" that another variant with higher transmissibility than Omicron and greater virulence than Delta will emerge.

"When case numbers in a community are plotted on graphs, the pattern of rise, peak and fall represent epidemic (or outbreak) and case numbers as a horizontal steady state are called endemic. When an epidemic pattern repeats, we call each a wave. So unless we see four weeks of low and stable numbers with only minor fluctuations, we cannot call the valley as endemic just as yet," John told PTI.

Nearly 95 per cent of swab samples examined in the latest round of genome sequencing in Mumbai were found infected with the Omicron variant of COVID-19, the city civic body has said.

The Omicron variant had triggered the third wave of the coronavirus pandemic in late December 2021 and it now ebbed in the Maharashtra state capital.

Mumbai reported 192 new COVID-19 cases on Monday, the lowest daily count since December 13, 2021, and two fresh fatalities linked to the infection.

The subject expert panel on Covid-19 vaccines on Monday recommended the drug regulator to grant emergency use authorisation to Hyderabad-based Biological E’s Corbevax for the age group of 12-18 years, subject to conditions, sources said.

Phase 2/3 human trials of the country’s first homegrown mRNA vaccine developed by Pune-based Gennova Biopharmaceuticals have been completed and the firm is in the process of submitting data to the national regulatory authority. Plans are also afoot to test the vaccine in the paediatric population initially in a phase 2 trial.

The Drug Controller General of India, had approved Phase II and Phase III study protocols for HGCO19, India’s first mRNA-based Covid-19 vaccine, developed by Gennova Biopharmaceuticals Limited (“Gennova”) in August last year. Read more

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he has invoked emergency powers to try to quell the protests by truck drivers and others who have paralysed Ottawa and blocked border crossings in anger over the country's Covid-19 restrictions.

Trudeau ruled out using the military and said Monday that the emergency measures "will be time-limited, geographically targeted, as well as reasonable and proportionate to the threats they are meant to address."

For the past two weeks, hundreds and sometimes thousands of protesters in trucks and other vehicles have clogged the streets of Ottawa, the capital, railing against vaccine mandates. (AP)

The daily Covid-19 cases have remained below 1 lakh for nine consecutive days now. The daily and weekly positivity rates stand at 2.23 per cent and 3.63 per cent respectively.

Meanwhile, 173.42 crore vaccine doses have been administered so far.

India recorded 27,409 new Covid-19 cases in the last 24 hours, registering a sharp dip from Monday's 34,113 infections. India's active case load now stands at 4,23,127, comprising 0.99 per cent of the total cases.

In the same period, 347 fatalities have been reported, taking the Covid-19 death toll to 5,09,358.