West Bengal Logs 4,494 New Covid Cases, 36 Deaths; Positivity Rate Improves to 7.12%

Mumbai today reported 1,815 new Covid-19 cases and 10 deaths in the last 24 hours.

Delhi has reported 6,028 new Covid-19 cases and 31 deaths in the last 24 hours. According to health bulletin, the positivity rate stood at 10.55 per cent.

Kerala has reported 55,475 new Covid-19 Cases and 70 deaths in the last 24 hours. The total positivity rate is at 49.4 per cent.

Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya today reviewed public health preparedness to Covid-19 and vaccination progress with nine states/union territories and urged them to focus on tele-consultation like eSanjeevani, and efficient monitoring of those in home isolation.

Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya during today’s meeting with states and union territories advised them to send Covid-19 testing and vaccination data timely. He also said that testing should be ramped up in the States where it has gone down. He also told the them that as a large number of people are opting for home isolation, they should be monitored as per national guidelines, ANI quoted official sources as saying.

The West Bengal government has spent Rs 74 crore from its State Disaster Response Fund to settle around 15,000 claims of COVID19 deaths out of the over 18,500 applications it has received so far, a minister said here on Tuesday. At least 80 per cent of the claims have been cleared, and more will be done soon, he stated. “In accordance with the Supreme Court guidelines, we are releasing the compensation amount as soon as we get clearance certificates from doctors,” state disaster management minister Javed Ahmed Khan told PTI. According to the minister, the department has received funds of Rs 100 crore from the state disaster management authority to pay compensation for such claims.

The Sikkim Government has made it mandatory for all persons entering the Himalayan state to produce a negative RTPCR report conducted within 72hours prior to the date of entry. A Home department notification issued on Monday said in case a person cannot produce an RTPCR negative test report he/she has to undergo a rapid antigen test at all entry check posts and Pakyong Airport. It said officials of the Government of India on official tours, Army personnel on duty, officers of the state government on official tours and election duty shall be exempted from this requirement. Drivers/conductors/helpers of commercial and passenger vehicles who commute daily shall be exempted.

Researchers in the US have developed a lowcost smartphone based diagnostic tool for COVID19 that combines the speed of overthecounter antigen tests with the accuracy of PCR tests. The Harmony COVID19 test developed by researchers at the University of Washington in the US detects genetic material from the SARSCoV2 virus, the researchers said.

While the conventional PCR tests can take several hours, the Harmony kit can provide results in less than 20 minutes for some samples and with similar accuracy, they said. “We designed the test to be low-cost and simple enough that it could be used anywhere,” said Bary Lutz, an associate professor at the University of Washington.

India is currently witnessing the third wave of Covid-19 as the number of infections is once again on the rise. The Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium (INSACOG) in its latest bulletin has stated that Covid-19 has reached the community transmission stage. Community spread of an epidemic occurs when an infectious disease is spread from an already infected person and not from a person to a group, making it difficult to identify the origin of the infection. Read the full story here.

The Omicron variant, one of the most transmissible variants of Covid-19 discovered yet, is in the community transmission stage in India and has become dominant in multiple metros where new cases have been rising exponentially, the INSACOG said in its latest bulletin recently. It also said BA.2 lineage, an infectious sub-variant of Omicron, has been found in a substantial fraction in the country. Read the full story here.

Arunachal Pradesh on Tuesday recorded 668 fresh COVID19 infections, the highest singleday tally this month, which pushed the caseload to 60,072, a senior official said here. The frontier state had recorded 462 cases on Monday, the official said.

Lok Sabha member from East Delhi Gautam Gambhir on Tuesday said he has tested positive for COVID19 and has mild symptoms. “After experiencing mild symptoms, I tested positive for Covid today. Requesting everyone who came into my contact to get themselves tested,” the cricketerturnedpolitician tweeted. In November last year, Gambhir had isolated himself at home after a family member tested positive for the virus. .

The industrial and commercial city of Tamil Nadu, Coimbatore is turning into the state’s Covid hotspot as the positivity rate has increased to 26.6 per cent. In a statement on Monday, Coimbatore District Collector G.S. Sameeran called upon the people to strictly follow Covid appropriate behaviour to prevent the spread of the infection. Sameeran also urged those who have not taken the vaccination and irected those who are eligible for the second dose of vaccine to take the jab at the earliest.

COVID19 breached the Pro Kabaddi League biobubble here with an unspecified number of players in two teams testing positive for the virus, forcing rescheduling of some of the matches. The PKL organisers said in a Monday night statement said that the affected players have been isolated. Changes have been made in the matches scheduled between January 25 and 30. After the successful completion of the first half of the leaguestage …, two of the 12 PKL teams have found it difficult to field the requisite number of 12 players for their respective matches due to some players in these teams testing positive for Covid19,” the organisers Mashal Sports said in a statement.

With the addition of 1,745 coronavirus positive cases, the infection count in Thane district of Maharashtra rose to 6,94,580, an official said on Tuesday. These new cases were reported on Monday, he said.

With 12 fatalities, the COVID-19 death toll in the district has gone up to 11,725. The mortality rate is 1.68 per cent, the official said. In neighboring Palghar district, the COVID-19 case count has gone up to 1,60,451 while the overall death toll is 3,358, a district official said.

Testing people with COVID symptoms has been a pillar of the UK’s pandemic response, reducing transmission by identifying and isolating those with the virus. But to be effective, it relies on people with symptoms getting tested, which raises an obvious question: what proportion of symptomatic people actually take a test? The ZOE COVID Study, which is funded by the government and run by a group including King’s College London and the city’s Guy’s and St Thomas’ hospitals, is uniquely positioned to answer this question. Each day more than 4 million participants in the UK report any symptoms they are feeling via the study’s app, and record the results of any recent COVID tests. Testing rules have evolved during the pandemic, but one rule has remained consistent: if you have one of the main three symptoms of COVID listed by the NHS (fever, a persistent new cough, or loss of taste or smell) but don’t otherwise know if you have the virus, you should take a PCR test.

2,55,874 new cases recorded in the last 24 hours

Daily positivity rate: 15.52%

Weekly Positivity Rate: 17.17%

Active caseload: 22,36,842

The Raj Bhawan on Monday night decided to cancel this year’s Republic Day ‘At Home’ reception in view of the spike in coronavirus cases in Jammu and Kashmir. Liutenant Governor Manoj Sinha has urged the people of the Union Territory to follow Covid Appropriate Behaviour (CAB) and safety protocols issued by the health officials, a Raj Bhawan spokesman said.

Jammu and Kashmir on Monday recorded 5,394 fresh cases of coronavirus taking the infection count to 4,02,596 while eight deaths due to the virus were reported in the past 24 hours, officials said. Out of the fresh cases, 2,045 were from the Jammu division and 3,349 from the Kashmir division, they said.

Uttar Pradesh’s COVID19 death toll rose to 23,073 on Monday with the addition of 17 fatalities, while the infection count reached 19,57,839 after detection of 11,159 fresh cases, according to an official statement. Of the 17 new fatalities, three deaths were reported from Moradabad, followed by two deaths each in Varanasi and Azamgarh, the Uttar Pradesh government said in a statement issued here.

West Bengal on Monday recorded 4,546 new COVID19 cases, pushing the tally to 19,69,791, while 37 more fatalities raised the toll to 20,375, a health department bulletin said. The state had on Sunday logged 6,980 fresh infections and 36 deaths due to the disease. The positivity rate came down to 8.84 per cent from Sunday’s 9.53 per cent, and the number of active cases currently has 94,535, down by 15,648 from the previous day’s count.