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Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya oversaw the exercise at the Centre-run Safdarjung Hospital in Delhi, while health ministers took stock in their respective states and gave information on available beds, oxygen support and other equipment, medicines, vaccines, etc.
The daily caseload of India, meanwhile, remained low with 157 fresh cases on Tuesday, a slight dip from Monday’s tally of 196 fresh infections. India, as on Tuesday, had 3,421 active cases. The figures will be updated as and when today’s data is released by the Ministry of Health.
China, which is facing its biggest outbreak, has scrapped quarantine rules for foreign arrivals on Tuesday, which means that inbound travellers will no longer need to quarantine from January 8, a decision which China announced after three years of self-imposed global isolation under a Covid Zero policy that battered the economy and stoked historic public discontent. People arriving in China will only be required to obtain negative Covid test results within 48 hours of departure, a statement from the National Health Commission said.
The decision by China to discontinue its quarantine rule for foreign arrivals comes amid horrifying stories of Covid crisis leaking out of the country, with millions reportedly testing positive daily and hospitals overburdened with patients.
Cocktail of Variants Driving Outbreak in China, Says India’s Covid Panel Chief
Chief of Centre’s Covid panel NK Arora, meanwhile, said on Tuesday that there is no need for panic over the fresh outbreak in China. India, he said in an interview to NDTV, is just going through “precautionary and pre-emptive” preparations in absence of a free flow of information from China. It, however, is clear that the outbreak in China is due to a cocktail of variants of the virus, which behave differently due to local epidemiology, Arora said.
He said that the BF.7 variant only accounts for 15 per cent of the cases in China, adding that the majority — 50 per cent — is from the BN and BQ series, and SVV variant is 10-15 per cent.
This is where India gains — because of “hybrid immunity”, a combination of immunity acquired through vaccines and the ones acquired through rampant infection, through the first, second and third wave.
“In China they are naive. They have not been exposed to the virus before, and the vaccine they got is probably less effective. I must tell you that most of them received three to four doses,” NDTV quoted NK Arora as saying.
Nasal Vaccine Prices Out
In another Covid-related development in India, prices of Bharat Biotech’s nasal vaccine against the novel virus were out on Tuesday. Bharat Biotech International Limited’s Covid-19 intranasal vaccine – iNCOVACC- which is now available on CoWIN portal is priced at Rs 800 (excluding GST) for private markets and Rs 325 (excluding GST) for government supplies.
A press release from the vaccine maker said the jab will be rolled out in the fourth week of January, 2023. iNCOVACC is the world’s first intranasal vaccine for Covid to receive approval for the primary two-dose schedule, and as a heterologous booster dose. Earlier this month, Bharat Biotech received approval from the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO) for the use of heterologous booster doses of iNCOVACC.
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