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washing hands to ensure that their enjoyment is not affected adversely by the virus.
With the Christmas and New Year’s holiday season kicking off the central government has stepped up measures against the virus in light of the cases rising, especially in China where the lifting of the zero-Covid policy has caused a spread of the pandemic. PM Modi has also chaired meetings and his government has written to the states to put in place adequate measures to deal with any spurt.
Experts have, however, believe that the Covid situation in India may not deteriorate like that of China since the primary variant that’s driving the spike in cases in the neighbouring nation is not a novelty here. Moreover, Indian have already developed “herd immunity” a top official of CSIR- Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) here said.
The BF.7 variant – sublineage of Omicron BA.5 – was earlier detected in India and four persons were found to be infected with it as well, but they have since recovered. “The severity of the infection is not as much as it used to be with Delta. That’s because of the fact that we do have herd immunity to an extent. Actually, we have herd immunity because we are exposed to the other viruses,” he told PTI.
“We (India) have seen the Delta wave which is a big one. Then we have got vaccination done. And then the Omicron wave came and we continued booster doses. We are different in many ways. What is happening in China may not happen in India because of that,” he further said.
Meanwhile, as a precautionary measure, the Centre has asked states and union territories to ensure the availability of Liquid Medical Oxygen, adequate inventory of cylinders and functional life support equipment such as ventilators at hospitals to face any challenge.
The government has also started random sampling of 2 per cent of international arrivals at all airports in an attempt to check any infection spike in the country. The Centre had said RT-PCR test would be made mandatory for passengers from China, Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Thailand and asked states to conduct a mock drill on December 27 to ensure the readiness of health facilities including medical oxygen generation plants.
As the testing at Indira Gandhi International Airport In Delhi continued for the second day on Sunday, some passengers tested positive, according to an official. At the Delhi airport, as many as 455 passengers were subjected to random coronavirus testing, starting from 10 am on Saturday till 7 pm on Sunday. Out of them, less than half per cent are positive cases, an official at Genestrings Diagnostic Centre said.
The government has made random coronavirus testing mandatory for two per cent of passengers arriving on each international flight from Saturday amid a surge in coronavirus cases in various countries.
On Sunday, Chief Medical Officer of Agra, Arun Srivastava said a 40-year-old man, who returned from China two days back, tested positive for COVID-19 following which he has been isolated at his home in the city. His samples will be sent to Lucknow for genome sequencing, he said.
“The man has been isolated at his home and teams of the health department have been asked to conduct tests of his family members and those who came in contact with him,” Srivastava added.
The man returned to Agra from China via Delhi on December 23 following which he was tested at a private lab. The report came out positive for Covid. This is the first Covid positive case in the district detected after November 25, officials said.
Meanwhile, China’s National Health Commission (NHC) stopped publishing daily COVID-19 data on Sunday, amid doubts about their reliability as infections have exploded in the wake of an abrupt easing of tough restrictions. “Relevant COVID information will be published by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention for reference and research,” the commission said in a statement, without specifying the reasons for the change or how frequently China CDC will update COVID information.
The NHC’s halt to reporting daily infection and death totals comes as concerns grow around the lack of vital information since Beijing made sweeping changes to a zero-COVID policy that had put hundreds of millions of its citizens under relentless lockdowns and battered the world’s second-largest economy. Despite the record surge of infections, the NHC had reported no COVID deaths nationwide for four consecutive days before halting the data release. China narrowed its definition for reporting COVID deaths, counting only those from COVID-caused pneumonia or respiratory failure, raising eyebrows among world health experts.
British-based health data firm Airfinity last week estimated China was experiencing more than a million infections and 5,000 deaths a day. After COVID cases were breaking daily records in late November, the NHC this month stopped reporting asymptomatic infections, making it harder to track cases.
Official figures from China had become an unreliable guide as less testing was being done across the country, while China has been routinely accused of downplaying infections and deaths. The United States has also reported COVID cases less frequently, changing from daily to weekly updates, citing needs to reduce the reporting burden on local areas.
The World Health Organization has received no data from China on new COVID hospitalisations since Beijing eased its restrictions. The organisation says the data gap might be due to the authorities struggling to tally cases in the world’s most populous country. Several models and reports in recent days have forecast as many as two million COVID deaths as the virus spreads to rural sections of the country, threatening to hit the most vulnerable elderly population and the unvaccinated.
The country’s healthcare system has been under enormous strain, with staff being asked to work while sick and even retired medical workers in rural communities being rehired to help grass-root efforts, according to state media. Bolstering the urgency is the approach of the Lunar New Year in January, when huge numbers of people return home.
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