Coronavirus live news updates: Karnataka reports 674 new Covid-19 cases; Delhi sees 227

Roxanne Lee, manager of the Tucson (Ariz.) Medical Center cath lab, stands with nurses and other colleagues during a ceremony to remember those who have died of the coronavirus, Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2021, in Tucson, Ariz. About 50 hospital staff showed up to the event which coincided with President-elect Joe Biden's national memorial for COVID-19 victims.

Credit: AP/PTI Photo

. Sasikala, 69, was rushed to the hospital after she had faced breathing issues.

. Delhi reports 227 new Covid-19 cases, 246 discharges and 8 deaths.

Total cases 6,33,276 Total recoveries 6,20,374 Death toll 10,782

Active cases 2120

. Karnataka reported 674 new Covid-19 cases, 815 discharges, and 2 deaths today.

Total cases: 9,34,252

Total discharges: 9,14,492

Death toll: 12,187

Active cases: 7,554

. All these persons have been kept in single room isolation in designated health care facilities by respective state governments, the ministry had said earlier.

Their close contacts have also been put under quarantine. Comprehensive contact tracing has been initiated for co-travellers, family contacts and others. Genome sequencing on other specimens is going on, the ministry said.

. Patrick Thornton, a 40-year-old math teacher in Houston, Tex., relies on his voice to clearly communicate with his high school students. So when he began to feel he was recovering from Covid, he was relieved to get his voice back a month after losing it. Thornton got sick in mid-August and had symptoms typical of a moderate case: a sore throat, headaches, trouble breathing.

By the end of September, “I was more or less counting myself as on the mend and healing,” Thornton says. “But on September 25, I took a nap, and then my mom called.” As the two spoke, Thornton’s mother remarked that it was great that his voice was returning. Something was wrong, however.

. Maharashtra first state to cross 20 lakh Covid-19 cases

Maharashtra's Covid-19 tally crossed the 20-lakh mark on Thursday with the addition of 2,886 fresh cases, said a state health department official.

With the new cases, Maharashtra's Covid-19 tally rose to 20,00,878. The grim milestone was reached more than 10 months after the first coronavirus case was reported in the state in the second week of March 2020.

. Police officers, wearing protective face masks and applying social distancing, stand guard in front of the parliament building during a demonstration of Greek university students against government plans to set up a university police, amid the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) pandemic, in Athens, Greece, January 21, 2021.

Credit: REUTERS Photo

. Rajasthan reported 265 new Covid-19 cases, 2 deaths and 406 recoveries today.

Total cases 3,16,081 Total recoveries 3,09,391 Death toll 2756

Active cases 3934

. Elected representatives above 50 years of age are likely to be vaccinated against Covid-19 in the second round of the ongoing inoculation drive after over three crore healthcare and frontline workers are vaccinated in the first round.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, most of his Cabinet ministers, including Rajnath Singh, Amit Shah and Nitin Gadkari, a majority of chief ministers and top-rung leaders of all political parties besides MPs and MLAs fall in this category.

. Andhra Pradesh reports 139 new Covid-19 cases in the last 24 hours, as per State Health Ministry.

Total cases: 8,86,557 Total recoveries: 8,77,893 Death toll: 7,142

Active cases: 1,522

. People are more likely to follow Covid-19 restrictions based on what their friends do, rather than their own principles, according to a study that shows how social influence affects adherence to government interventions.

The researchers, including those from the University of Nottingham in the UK, found that the best predictor of people's compliance to the rules was how much their close circle complied with the rules, which had an even stronger effect than people's own approval of the rules.

. According to the yet-to-be peer reviewed study, published in the preprint platform bioRxiv, the novel lineage of the coronavirus -- 501Y.V2 -- has mutations in nine parts of its spike protein, which enables it to infect human cells.

. Mongolia's Prime Minister Khuresukh Ukhnaa has submitted his resignation to parliament after protests in the capital Ulaanbaatar about the government's handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, the state news agency Montsame reported on Thursday.

The protests erupted on Wednesday in response to allegations that the government had mishandled the relocation of a Covid-19 patient and her newborn baby, Montsame said.

After earning praise for its handling of the coronavirus in the early stages, Mongolia has recently been battling an outbreak caused by an infected driver entering from Russia.

(Reuters)

. Chancellor Angela Merkel on Thursday defended a decision to extend a hard lockdown in Germany by two weeks until mid-February, saying it was necessary to slow a new and more aggressive variant of the coronavirus.

Speaking at a news conference, Merkel said that while restrictions were showing results in the form of fewer new infections, it would be a mistake to ease curbs given the mutation had been identified in Germany.

"Our efforts face a threat and this threat is clearer now than at the start of the year and this is the mutation of the virus," said Merkel.

"The findings show that the mutated virus is much more infectious than the one we have had for a year and this is a main reason for the aggressive rise in infections in England and Ireland."

Merkel said the mutation was still not dominant in Germany and that only a cautious approach could prevent an aggressive rise in daily new infections caused by the new variant first identified in England.

Germany, which has been in lockdown since early November, reported more than 1,000 deaths and more than 20,000 new infections on Thursday. Merkel and state leaders agreed on Tuesday to extend a hard lockdown that keeps schools, restaurants and all non-essential businesses shut until Feb. 14.

"This mutation has been identified in Germany but it is not dominant, at least not yet," said Merkel. "Still, we need to take the threat posed by this mutation very seriously. We need to slow the spread of this mutation as much as possible."

(Reuters)

. China plans to impose strict Covid-19 testing requirements during the Lunar New Year holiday season, when tens of millions of people are expected to travel, as it battles the worst wave of new infections since March 2020.

. Arunachal Pradesh did not report a single Covid-19 case in the past 24 hours, while six more patients recovered from the disease during the period, a senior health official said on Thursday.

The state's coronavirus tally stood at 16,815, he said.

A total of 1,131 health workers have received shots of Covid-19 vaccine so far, including 56 in Changlang district on Wednesday, State Surveillance Officer (SSO) Lobsang Jampa said. (PTI)

. The Union Territory of Puducherry logged 35 new coronavirus cases during the last 24 hours taking the overall tally to 38,772, a top Health department official said on Thursday.

No fresh fatality was reported from any of the four regions-Puducherry, Karaikal, Mahe and Yanam-, Director of Health and Family Welfare S Mohan Kumar said in a release. (PTI)

. The number of US Covid-19 deaths on Wednesday surpassed the country's toll of military fatalities in World War II, according to a tracker maintained by Johns Hopkins University.

As of the evening, the tracker showed that 405,400 people have died from the disease caused by the new coronavirus in the United States.

The total number of combat and non-combat deaths in World War II was 405,399, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs.

. China plans to impose strict Covid testing requirements during the Lunar New Year holiday season, when tens of millions of people are expected to travel, as it battles the worst wave of new infections since March 2020.

Millions of residents in Hebei province surrounding Beijing, the northeastern Jilin province and Heilongjiang have been put into lockdown in recent weeks amid what is the worst wave of new infections since March 2020. (Reuters)

. Portugal's new daily Covid-19 cases jumped to more than 14,600 to set a new national record Wednesday, as the country weathers one of the worst pandemic surges in the world.

Health authorities officially reported 14,647 new infections — about 3,600 more than the previous daily record set four days ago.

. As embattled Tokyo Olympics organisers enter the final six months of preparations for the delayed Games on Saturday, virus experts believe hosting the world's biggest sporting event may be too big a gamble.

The Olympics are due to start on July 23 but with much of Japan in a state of emergency and growing public opposition, organisers are under increasing pressure.

. India on Thursday logged 15,223 cases of Covid-19 and saw 151 succumb to the deadly virus. Nearly 20,000 recovered from the virus, MoHFW data showed.

Total cases: 1,06,10,883

Active cases: 1,92,308

Total discharges: 1,02,65,706

Death toll: 1,52,869

Total vaccinated: 8,06,484

. Primary and Secondary Education Minister S Suresh Kumar said on Wednesday that classes would be conducted even during summer vacation as schools and pre-university colleges were reopened after a gap of nine months due to Covid-19 pandemic.

Speaking to media persons afterinspecting a smart class in government high school at Durgigudi in the city on Wednesday,the ministersaid, "SSLC examinations would be conducted in June this year.

. The new Covid-19 variant identified in South Africa can evade the antibodies that attack it in treatments using blood plasma from previously recovered patients, and may reduce the efficacy of the current line of vaccines, scientists said on Wednesday.

Researchers are racing to establish whether the vaccines currently being rolled out across the globe are effective against the so-called 501Y.V2 variant, identified by South African genomics experts late last year in Nelson Mandela Bay.

. The Mahadevapura Zone has been registering the largest number of Covid-19 cases for the past three months, with officials saying that a large number of returning immigrants are contributing to the spike.

In many of the city’s worst-hit areas in the early stages such as Padarayanapura and Shivajinagar, officials could see the outbreak peak in three months.

. Karnataka on Wednesday reported 501 new Covid-19 cases and four deaths, taking the infection count to 9,33,578, and the toll to 12,185.

The day also saw 665 patients getting discharged after recovery. The number of recoveries has reached 9,13,677. As on January 20, the state has 7,697 active carriers of the virus.Bengaluru Urban saw 260 new infections and two deaths.

. The coronavirus variant detected in South Africa poses a "significant re-infection risk" and raises concerns over vaccine effectiveness, according to preliminary research Wednesday, as separate studies suggested the British strain would likely be constrained by immunisations.

Several new variants -- each with a cluster of genetic mutations -- have emerged in recent weeks, sparking fears over an increase in infectiousness as well as suggestions that the virus could begin to elude immune response, whether from prior infection or a vaccine.

. The number of tests conducted in Delhi to diagnose coronavirus has crossed the one crore-mark on Wednesday, with Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal hailing the milestone as a "new record".

In a tweet, Kejriwal asserted the city had "successfully contained the scale and spread" of the infection.

. After a gap of around 10 months, the devotees can go inside Lord Jagannath temple here from Thursday without a mandatory requirment of showing the Covid-19 negative report.

The decision to lift the provision of producing Covid-19 negative report for entry in the 12th century shrine from Thursday was informed by Chief Administrator of Shree Jagannath Temple Administration (SJTA), Krishan Kumar Wednesday after a meeting with the Puri district administration and the local police. "The devotees can enter the temple from 7 am on January 21.

Coronavirus live news updates: Karnataka reports 674 new Covid-19 cases; Delhi sees 227

Roxanne Lee, manager of the Tucson (Ariz.) Medical Center cath lab, stands with nurses and other colleagues during a ceremony to remember those who have died of the coronavirus

Sasikala tests positive for Covid-19

Delhi reports 227 new Covid-19 cases

Karnataka reported 674 new Covid-19 cases

145 people infected with UK variant of coronavirus in India: MoHFW

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