Published May 15, 2021, 12:15 AM
After more than six weeks of enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) and its modified version (MECQ), President Duterte has once again placed the National Capitol Region Plus area under a ‘stricter’ general community quarantine (GCQ) from May 15 to 31.
Recall that before the start of Holy Week, ECQ was imposed on what was then a newly created NCR Plus bubble. This was on account of a rapid upsurge in COVID-19 infections that was attributed in part to the newly discovered variants originating overseas that had already been detected in the country.
By simply visiting the Department of Health’s COVID-19 tracker on the internet, Juan de la Cruz could find out for himself how the country is now faring in terms of containing the deadly pandemic. During the latest reported seven-day period ending on May 13, the number of those who recovered jumped from 999,011 to 1,050,643 or an increase of 51,632. This translates to a daily average of 7,376 recov
The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation has been meeting the second wave of the COVID-19 challenge on a war footing. Sonam Saigal reports on how the civic body learnt lessons from the first wave and adopted a decentralised approach which is showing results slowly but surely
Reduced antibodies not a cause of worry on efficacy against COVID-19, say experts
Both Covishield and Covaxin, while effective at generating an immune response against the coronavirus, appear to generate only half as many antibodies against the B.1.617 strain, or the Indian strain, according to a series of early reports authored by scientists at the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR). Several scientists told
The Hindu that this drop didn t diminish the fact that the vaccines continued to be potent tool against COVID-19.
Scientists at the ICMR-National Institute of Virology (NIV), Pune have since January been collecting samples from coronavirus-positive individuals and testing them for prominent variants mostly the international variants of concern B.1.1.7 (UK variant), the B.1.351 (South Africa variant), the P2 (Brazil variant) and B.1.617 (Indian variant). Three related variants of the B.1.617 now make up an increasing proportion of cases in India.