In a new lockdown to curb the spread of the highly transmissible Omicron variant of coronavirus, millions of residents in central China are home confined. A mass testing drive has been launched by the government to control the situation. 14 million residents are ordered to undergo testing. According to the reports, all the non-essential businesses are also shut down. Beijing is looking forward to hosting the Winter Olympics next month with its “zero-Covid” strategy. The city is under high alert due to the new outbreak with targeted lockdowns, lengthy quarantines, border restrictions.
On Sunday, according to the African Union’s health watchdog by AFP, Africa has recorded more than 10 million coronavirus cases. The African Centres for Disease Control (CDC) released the data showcasing the 55 member states of the African Union with more than 10,028,508 cases since the outbreak of the pandemic. The CDC confirms recording the death toll of 231,157. Several countries on the continent have enforced new restrictions following the discovery of the highly contagious Omicron variant in South Africa in late November. However, due to poor access to jabs and some vaccine hesitancy
According to the professor of biological science at the University of Cyprus and head of the Laboratory of Biotechnology and Molecular Virology, Leondios Kostrikis said that a new strain of COVID-19 was found. This new strain is the combination of the Delta and Omicron variants. On Friday in a televised interview he said, “there are currently omicron and delta co-infectious and we found this strain that is a combination of these two”. The new variant is named “deltacron” as the study suggests omicron-like genetic signatures are found within the delta genomes. Professor and his t
Due to the increasing number of Covid-19 cases caused by the highly infectious Omicron variant, Hong Kong is on alert and has decided on taking some stringent measures to curb the spread of the disease in the state. On Wednesday, the Hong Kong government barred flights from India and seven other nations for at least two weeks which is one of the most important steps to prevent the spread of the disease. Hong Kong has currently reported 114 cases of Omicron and all of them have been imported. However, the Special Administration Region (SAR) is currently witnessing the local spread of the di
The major countries like U.S, U.K and Australia are at the worst position in terms of the effects of the new Omicron variant. According to news agency Reuters, the U.S broke the record with reporting over million Covid-19 cases. The rapid increase in the Covid cases have also led to a sharp rise in hospitalization in the U.S with over 50% increase over the past week. More than 100,000 people have been hospitalised which has been the highest record of the year. The U.S is the worst hit due to the Omicron variant and has reported almost 978,856 new cases on Monday. However, the death rate ha
The United States on Monday again shook the world by reporting almost 1 million cases in one day as the true data of Covid-19 cases over the holiday season came into the limelight. As the highly mutated Omicron variant of Covid-19 is spreading fast like wildfire across the nation, the disease had spread rapidly during the holiday season but the government delayed the reporting of these cases which worsened the situation. The data collected on Monday was double the number reported just four days ago of 590,000 cases. The John Hopkins University collected the data which relies on the local gove
As the entire world is battling the spread of the highly infectious Covid-19 variant Omicron, there is another variant diagnosed in France ‘IHU’ which is said to be even more mutated than Omicron and is more infectious than the former. There are 12 persons who have already been infected with this new variant and if not controlled in time, it will likely spread like wildfire and would be another huge global issue to tackle. The researchers at the Institute IHU Mederranee Infection discovered this new variant of Covid-19, therefore, it is named ‘IHU’. According to the reports, the IH
The United States Food and Drug Administration stated on Monday that the third dose of Pfizer and BioTech Covid-19 vaccine would be available even for children from 12 to 15 years of age. It also shortened the interval for booster shot eligibility from six months to five months. Seeing the worsening situations, it even authorized the third shot for children aged 5 to 11 years of age who are immunocompromised. The FDA’s decision came following the rapid rise in the Covid-19 cases all across the globe including the U.S.A where the new Omicron variant is causing a big hazard with the numbe
The Philippines has witnessed the biggest Covid-19 surge of all time as the daily infections have reached two month high in January 2022. The Health Department says that the number of cases is likely to rise even more in the coming days after they found out that the highly contagious and mutated Omicron variant that is spreading steadily in other parts of the world has reached the country. Following the rapidly rising cases in the Philippines, its government has decided to expand its restrictions in Manila from Wednesday onwards. The Presidential spokesperson Karlo Nograles said that the p
The weekly number of COVID-19 cases has crossed 10 million since last Sunday fuelled by the highly mutated Omicron variant that originated from Africa. The new weekly figure is double the previous record of 5.7 million that was seen during April last year. According to the estimate, almost twice the number of people were diagnosed Covid-19 positive in the past week due to the havoc created by the new highly contagious Omicron variant. The increasing number of cases has caused worry across the globe especially to the countries with a massive population such as the United Kingdom, the United St