Covid-19 Wrap-up: Missing out on deaths completely unlikely, says Health Ministry

Savitri Devi has been searching for work since she lost her job at a garment factory in New Delhi, along with half her co-workers, when sales plummeted at the start of the pandemic last year. The 44-year-old has tried her luck repeatedly - and unsuccessfully - near her home in Okhla, an industrial hub with thousands of small factories and workshops, where there was previously plenty of unskilled jobs for women. "I am ready to take a salary cut, but there is no work," Savitri said.

Stepping up surveillance in the backdrop of a surge in Covid-19 cases, Bengaluru's BBMP ordered a mandatory institutional quarantine for travellers returning to the city from Maharashtra and Kerala without a negative RT-PCR certificate.

With 42,625 people testing positive for Covid-19 in a day, India's total tally of Covid-19 cases rose above 3.17 crore and the active caseload increased to over 4.1 lakh, according to government data updated this morning.

The Health Ministry today clarified that while some Covid-19 cases could go undetected as per the principles of infectious diseases and their management, missing out on deaths was completely unlikely given the robust and statute-based death registration system in India.

The pandemic's second wave is "still raging" as eight states are showing high reproductive numbers of infections, indicating a faster spread of the disease in these regions, the Health Ministry cautioned.

The body of government doctors in Kerala urged the Left government to strictly implement contact tracing and 17 days quarantine for Covid-19-infected people and impose restrictions in specific micro-containment zones to bring down infection cases in the state.

Maharashtra seems to be putting up a stellar fight against Covid-19 as data from yesterday's Health Ministry briefing showed that the state had controlled the spread of the virus months after it was one of the worst-hit in the first and second wave.

Among people infected by Covid-19's Delta variant, fully vaccinated people with "breakthrough" infections might be just as likely as unvaccinated people to spread the virus to others, new research suggested.

The gender disparity in India's Covid-19 immunisation drive has narrowed, government data showed, as pregnant women are now allowed to get their shots and authorities try to dispel rumours about fertility.

Any notion that Covid-19 was going to last for just a few months was very much misplaced in 2020. Especially after it was recognised that the SARS-CoV-2 virus was largely spread through the airborne route, all indications were that it would cause repeat bouts of waves. In addition, very few scientists predicted that we would see the type of mutations that occurred over such a short period of time. This has resulted in the virus becoming both more transmissible and more able to evade immune responses. What this means is that herd immunity is no longer a discussion the world should be having.

Fully-vaccinated people have an around 50% to 60% reduced risk of infection from the Delta variant, including those who are asymptomatic, a large English coronavirus prevalence study found.

Vaccines targeting the highly transmissible Delta variant may now be needed, given its ability to infect people with fading immunity and potentially increased severity, according to researchers leading an English study of Covid-19 jabs.

Physicians working in Covid-19 hot spots across the US say that the patients in hospitals are not like the patients they saw last year. Almost always unvaccinated, the new arrivals tend to be younger, many in their 20s or 30s. And they seem sicker than younger patients were last year, deteriorating more rapidly. Many physicians treating them suspect that the Delta variant, which now accounts for more than 80% of new infections in that nation, is playing a role.

Authorities in Wuhan said that they would test its entire population for Covid-19 after the central Chinese city where the novel coronavirus emerged reported its first local infections in more than a year.