Coronavirus News Highlights: Karnataka sees 24,172 new Covid-19 cases, positivity rate at 17.11%

With more than 75% of India’s adult population fully vaccinated, public health experts on Sunday suggested modifications of Covid-19 strategies such as free distribution of good quality masks to the poor and using hospitalisation numbers instead of test positivity for guiding public health action. Stay tuned for live updates.

Covid-19 pandemic pushes India's health expenditure to 2.1% of GDP

A significant budgetary increase for the healthcare sector in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic pushed India's health expenditure to 2.1 per cent of GDP for the first time, bringing it close to the government's policy aspiration.

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Nobody losing jobs due to Covid-19 vaccine mandates: Centre to SC

The Centre on Monday opposed in the Supreme Court a contention that people were losing their jobs and rations allegedly due to the Covid-19 vaccine mandates issued by various states and authorities.

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Canada PM Trudeau says tests positive for Covid-19

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Monday he had tested positive for Covid-19 but was not experiencing severe symptoms.

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Mumbai reports 960 new Covid-19 cases, active cases 9,900

Karnataka sees 24,172 new Covid-19 cases, positivity rate at 17.11%

Kerala reports 42,154 new Covid-19 cases

Kerala reports 42,154 new Covid-19 cases, 38,458 recoveries & 14 deaths in the last 24 hours.

West Bengal govt relaxes Covid-19 restrictions

Children unlikely to develop severe Covid disease: NTAGI chief

Children are as susceptible as adults to catching Covid-19 infection as several serosurveys have proved but they are unlikely to develop severe diseases, National Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation in India (NTAGI) Chairman N K Arora said on Monday.

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India opted for 'Barbell Strategy' with safety nets as part of economic response to Covid

Faced with all this uncertainty, the government of India opted for a "Barbell Strategy" that combined a bouquet of safety-nets to cushion the impact on vulnerable sections of society/business, with a flexible policy, said the Economic Survey 2021-22 which was presented in Parliament on Monday.

The last two years have been particularly challenging for policy-making around the world with repeated waves from a mutating virus, travel restrictions, supply-chain disruptions and more recently, global inflation.

This is a common strategy used in financial markets to deal with extreme uncertainty by combining two seemingly disparate legs. The iterative leg of this strategy is the same as the "Agile" approach that uses feedback-loops, and real-time adjustment.

Covid virus may remain active, transmissible for longer than recommended quarantine period: Study

Some people infected with SARS-CoV-2 may be able to transmit the virus for longer than the recommended quarantine period, without necessarily manifesting any symptoms during the final stage of the infection, a study suggests.

The research, published recently in the journalFrontiers in Medicine, involved 38 Brazilian patients who were followed on a weekly basis between April and November 2020.

The researchers affiliated with the Pasteur-USP Scientific Platform, a partnership between France's Pasteur Institute, the University of Sao Paulo (USP) and Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz) in Brazil, followed the patients until they tested negative twice or three times consecutively by RT-qPCR.

They found that it took a month on average for the diagnostic test to become negative.

MPs violate Covid norms during President Kovind's joint address

MPs cutting across party lines were seen violating social distancing norms during President Ram Nath Kovind's address to the joint sitting of both houses of Parliament on Monday.

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Thane logs 865 new Covid-19 cases, 7 deaths

Thane has added 865 new cases of coronavirus, raising the infection count in the Maharashtra district to 7,01,939, while seven more deaths pushed the toll to 11,778, an official said on Monday. These new cases and deaths were reported on Sunday, he said, adding that the Covid-19 mortality rate in the district stood at 1.67 per cent. In neighbouring Palghar district, the Covid-19 case count has gone up to 1,62,032, while the death toll has reached 3,372, another official said.(PTI)

India reports 2.09 lakh Covid-19 cases, 959 deaths

India on Monday reported 2,09,918 new Covid-19 cases and 959 deaths, government data showed.

The daily positivity rate now stands at 15.77 per cent while the active caseload is 18,31,268.

In the last 24 hours, 2,62,628 recovered from the disease.

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‘Stealth’ Omicron variant could slow case decline

In recent days, headlines about a “stealth” Omicron variant have conjured the notion that a villainous new form of the coronavirus is secretly creating a disastrous new wave of Covid-19.

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Spotify to link virus content to Covid facts

Music streaming giant Spotify announced Sunday that it would start guiding listeners of podcasts discussing Covid-19 to more information about the pandemic, following a row that saw artist Neil Young remove his music from the platform.

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Mainland China reports 58 new Covid-19 cases on Jan 30 vs 81 a day earlier

Mainland China reported 58 new Covid-19 cases on Jan. 30, down from 81 a day earlier, the national health authority said on Monday.

The National Health Commission in its daily bulletin said 40 of the new cases were local infections, with the remaining 18 coming from overseas. Of the local transmissions, 24 were in the city of Hangzhou on the eastern coast, with 11 in northern Tianjin and three in the capital Beijing. - Reuters.