Covid News and Updates

India recorded 1590 new COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours, a press release issued by the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare stated on Saturday morning.

According to the Health Ministry, India’s active caseload currently stands at 8,601. The total number of recoveries from the infection has increased to 4,41,62,832 with 910 in the last 24 hours.

India’s recovery rate currently stands at 98.79 per cent.
The Daily Positivity rate and Weekly Positivity rate currently stand at 1.33 per cent and 1.23 per cent respectively.
The statement also said that 1,19,560 COVID tests were conducted in the last 24 hours, as of Saturday morning, and the conducted tests have so far reached a total of 92.08 crores.

Under the Nationwide Vaccination Drive, India has so far administered 220.65 crore Covid-19 Vaccine doses (95.20 crores Second Dose and 22.86 crores Precaution Dose), of which 9,497 doses were administered in the last 24 hours.

To combat Covid-19, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) encouraged all states on Thursday to maintain concentrating on the 5-pronged approach of Test-Track-Treat-Vaccination and Covid Appropriate Behavior. According to the letter,  “We will do another mock drill to see the COVID-19 preparations. Mock drills will be done soon in all the states/UTs.”

According to a Health Ministry notice, more than 220.65 crore total doses of vaccinations have been provided across the country. “There has been no evidence of an increase in hospitalization. Precaution doses should be increased. Enhanced lab surveillance and testing of all severe acute respiratory Illness (Sari) cases needs to be done”, reads the statement.

The Ministry has also ordered states to guarantee that necessary medications and supplies for Influenza and Covid 19 are available in health institutions. Apart from that, states have been requested to guarantee that there are enough dedicated beds and health personnel.

The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has issued revised guidelines for Covid-19 in the wake of the surge of cases in the past week across the country.

“@ICMRDELHI COVID19 National Task Force, @aiims_newdelhi & Dte.GHS revised clinical guidance for management of adult #COVID19 patients. Guideline does not advice use of Lopinavir-ritonavir, HCQ, Ivermectin, Convalescent plasma, Molnupiravir, Favipiravir, Azithromycin, Doxycycline,” Dr Lokesh Sharma, Heath informatics researcher, ICMR tweeted.

“Antibiotics should not be used unless there is clinical suspicion of bacterial infection. The possibility of coinfection of COVID-19 with other endemic infections must be considered. Systemic corticosteroids are not indicated in mild disease,” revised guidelines said.

As per the revised Ccovid-19 guidelines, maintain “Physical distancing, indoor mask use, hand hygiene, Symptomatic management (hydration, anti-pyretics, antitussive) Monitor temperature and oxygen saturation (by applying a SpO probe to fingers) Stay in contact with treating physician.

“Seek immediate medical attention if difficulty breathing, High-grade fever/ severe cough, particularly if lasting for more than 5 days. A low threshold is to be kept for those with any of the high-risk features,” guidelines discussed and prepared in January said.

Additionally, in moderate or severe diseases at high risk of progression, the guidelines recommend, “Consider Remdesivir for up to 5 days (200 mg IV on day 1 followed by 100 mg IV OD for the next 4 days)”.

Union Health and Family Welfare Ministry on Thursday wrote to the State governments of Maharashtra, Gujarat, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka to follow a five-fold strategy of test, track, treat and vaccinations as these states witness a rise in Covid-19 cases.

India has observed a significant decline in the number of Covid-19 cases during the past few months. However, in the past few weeks a rise in cases has been noted specifically in certain parts of the country with a total of 2,082 cases reported in the week ending March 8, 2023, which rose to 3,264 cases in the week ending March 15, said the Union Home Ministry’s letter.

There are few States which are reporting a higher number of cases indicating the possible localized spread of infection and there is a need to follow a risk assessment-based approach to prevent and contain the infection, without losing the gains made so far in the fight against the pandemic, said the Union Health Ministry.

Gujarat has reported an increase in weekly cases from 105 in the week ending March 8, 2023, to 279 in the week ending March 15. Further, the State reported a positivity rate of 1.11 per cent in the week ending March 15 which is higher than India’s positivity rate of 0.61 per cent during the same period, the letter said.

According to a new study, COVID-19-related stress had a larger impact on the mental health of pregnant women during the pandemic than on those who were not.

Dr Susanne Schweizer from UNSW Science, together with colleagues in Europe and the United States, collected data on mental health at several time periods during and after pregnancy in a longitudinal research of 742 pregnant individuals. Their analysis found COVID-19 related stress had the greatest impact on pregnant people who had a tendency to worry, felt lonely, or had a low tolerance for uncertainty.

A follow-up study, published today in JAMA Network Open, looked at COVID-19 related stress in the postpartum period, 1.5 years after the first investigation. The team found that feeling stressed about the pandemic during pregnancy not only had a lasting effect on participants’ own mental health, but was also associated with an increase in negative mood in their infants.

“The Centre for Disease Control identifies pregnant women as a vulnerable group in terms of physical health during pandemics and disease outbreaks,” says Dr Schweizer. “Based on these findings, and those of others, we should also identify pregnant women as a vulnerable group in terms of mental health.”
Mental health vulnerability factors

Importantly, the research team compared the pregnant women who took part in the study to gender, age and country matched controls. “So, you have someone who’s as similar as possible, but who isn’t pregnant at that point in time. And we looked at the impacts of pandemic related stress on their mental health,” says Dr Schweizer.

Pandemic stress was measured using the Pandemic Anxiety Scale, which measures individuals’ concerns about the pandemic, including worries about contracting the virus, having enough food and job-related impacts.

Unsurprisingly, COVID-19 related stress was associated with more mental health problems in both women who were pregnant and those who weren’t. “But not all women were affected in the same way. There were vulnerability factors, such as lack of social support, increased loneliness, worry and intolerance of uncertainty, which had a greater impact on mental health in the context of pandemic related stress in pregnant women, compared to their non pregnant counterparts,” says Dr Schweizer.

Effect on infant behaviour

At the final timepoint, on average 18 months after the initial assessment, the team administered the same set of measures to the cohort.

“But this time, we also administered a measure on postpartum distress, which captures mental health symptoms that are related to the postpartum period, such as thoughts of harm befalling the child or inflicting harm on a child, and we also measured infant mood and behaviour.”

The follow-up study found that COVID-19 related stress during pregnancy, captured in the first paper, was significantly associated with poor postpartum maternal mental health outcomes.

“What’s always going to predict your mental health best is your mental health at a previous timepoint,” says Dr Schweizer. “So I was surprised that pandemic related stress during pregnancy adversely impacted maternal depression, anxiety and distress that far into the future, even when we controlled for their previous levels of mental wellbeing.”

But it wasn’t just the mothers who were negatively impacted. For those who were stressed by the pandemic, there was a higher chance of what researchers call ‘negative affectivity’ in their infants.

Negative affectivity includes the infant being more likely to cry and less easily settled, as well as less likely to venture into an unknown situation.

“Negative affectivity is a measure of infant mood. But it’s been associated with a range of behavioural problems, and importantly, also cognition. It has also been associated with developmental outcomes across the lifespan.”
While there is already a robust literature showing that maternal postpartum mental health is significantly associated with infant behaviour, this is one of the first studies to examine the association of stress during pregnancy with mother and infant mental health outcomes during the pandemic.

Bringing mental health to the forefront

Dr Schweizer herself has lived experience of being pregnant during the pandemic.
“I was very lucky in that I knew I was in a position that I could continue working, so I didn’t have those economic pressures, but I was a high-risk pregnancy. And then my child was born premature,” said Dr Schweizer.

“That’s a distressing experience anyway, even under normal circumstances, but it was very much compounded by the fact that I was separated from my other children, I was never able to see my daughter with my husband together until much later.

“And so for me, it was a very direct and personal experience of how this the pandemic impacted the peripartum period.”
She argues more support is urgently needed for pregnant people’s mental health as part of standard pregnancy care. “Pregnancy is a period of vulnerability for mental health problems. Intense and rapidly fluctuating moods and emotions are a normal part of pregnancy and after birth many people will experience intrusive, unwanted thoughts. But we are not told enough about this.

“Pregnant individuals need to be given information about what to expect, what is common and when they should seek help.”

According to a large study published in The BMJ, most symptoms or diseases that occur after a mild Covid-19 infection last several months but return to normal within a year.

When compared to unvaccinated people, vaccinated people were at a lower risk of developing breathing difficulties, the most common side effect of mild infection. According to the researchers, while the long covid phenomenon has been feared and discussed since the beginning of the pandemic, the vast majority of mild disease cases do not suffer from serious or chronic long term illness.

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Study reveals most long covid symptoms resolve within a year after mild infection

ANI | Updated: Jan 12, 2023 23:54 IST

Washington [US], January 12 (ANI): According to a comprehensive study published in The BMJ, most symptoms or diseases that occur after mild Covid-19 infection last for several months but recover to normal within a year.

In particular, vaccinated people were at lower risk of breathing difficulties – the most common effect to develop after mild infection – compared with unvaccinated people. These findings suggest that, although the long covid phenomenon has been feared and discussed since the beginning of the pandemic, the vast majority of mild disease cases do not suffer serious or chronic long term illness, say the researchers.

Long covid is defined as symptoms persisting or new symptoms appearing more than four weeks after initial infection. In March 2022, an estimated 1.5 million people in the UK (2.4 pc of the population) reported long covid symptoms, mainly fatigue, shortness of breath, loss of smell, loss of taste, and difficulty concentrating.

But the clinical effects of long covid one year after mild infection and their association with age, sex, covid-19 variants, and vaccination status are still unclear.

To address this, researchers compared the health of uninfected individuals with those who had recovered from mild covid-19 for a year after infection.

They used electronic records of a large public healthcare organisation in Israel, in which almost 2 million members were tested for covid-19 between 1 March 2020 and 1 October 2021. Over 70 long covid conditions were analysed in a group of infected and matched uninfected members (average age 25 years; 51% female).

They compared conditions in unvaccinated people, with and without covid-19 infection, controlling for age, sex and covid-19 variants, during early (30-180 days) and late (180-360 days) time periods after infection. Conditions in vaccinated versus unvaccinated people with covid-19 were also compared over the same time periods.

To ensure only mild disease was assessed, they excluded patients admitted to hospital with more serious illness. Other potentially influential factors, such as alcohol intake, smoking status, socioeconomic level, and a range of pre-existing chronic conditions were also taken into account.

Covid-19 infection was significantly associated with increased risks of several conditions including loss of smell and taste, concentration and memory impairment, breathing difficulties, weakness, palpitations, streptococcal tonsillitis and dizziness in both early and late time periods, while hair loss, chest pain, cough, muscle aches and pains and respiratory disorders resolved in the late period.

For example, compared with non-infected people, mild covid-19 infection was associated with a 4.5-fold higher risk of smell and taste loss (an additional 20 people per 10,000) in the early period and an almost 3-fold higher risk (11 per 10,000 people) in the late period.

The overall burden of conditions after infection across the 12-month study period was highest for weakness (an additional 136 people per 10,000) and breathing difficulties (107 per 10,000).

When conditions were assessed by age, breathing difficulties were the most common, appearing in five of the six age groups but remaining persistent throughout the first year post-infection in the 19-40, 41-60, and over 60 years age groups.

Weakness appeared in four of the six age groups and remained persistent in the late phase only in the 19-40 and 41-60 age groups.

Male and female patients showed minor differences, and children had fewer outcomes than adults during the early phase of covid-19, which mostly resolved in the late period. Findings were similar across the wild-type, Alpha and Delta covid-19 variants.

Vaccinated people who became infected had a lower risk of breathing difficulties and similar risk for other conditions compared with unvaccinated infected patients.

The researchers point to some limitations, such as incomplete measurement within medical records, so data might not fully reflect diagnoses and outcomes reported. And they can’t rule out the possibility that covid-19 patients may use healthcare services more frequently, resulting in higher reporting and increased screening for potential covid-related outcomes in these patients.

Nevertheless, this was a large detailed analysis of health records across a diverse population, representing one of the longest follow-up studies in patients with mild covid-19 to date. And findings should apply to similar western populations worldwide.

“Our study suggests that mild covid-19 patients are at risk for a small number of health outcomes and most of them are resolved within a year from diagnosis,” say the researchers.

• “Importantly, the risk for lingering dyspnoea was reduced in vaccinated patients with breakthrough infection compared with unvaccinated people, while risks of all other outcomes were comparable,” they add.

An Emory University study found that extracts from two common wild plants reduce the virus’s ability to infect living cells.
The findings were reported in Scientific Reports as the first major screening of botanical extracts for SARS-CoV-2 viral efficacy. Extracts from the blooms of tall goldenrod (Solidago altissima) and the rhizomes of eagle fern (Pteridium aquilinum) each prevented SARS-CoV-2 from entering human cells in laboratory dish experiments. Plants contain just trace amounts of the active chemicals. People attempting to treat themselves with them would be futile and perhaps hazardous, according to the study. They caution that the eagle fern is known to be harmful.

“It’s very early in the process, but we’re working to identify, isolate and scale up the molecules from the extracts that showed activity against the virus,” said Cassandra Quave, senior author of the study and associate professor in Emory School of Medicine’s Department of Dermatology and the Center for the Study of Human Health, adding, “Once we have isolated the active ingredients, we plan to further test for their safety and for their long-range potential as medicines against Covid-19.”

Quave is an ethnobotanist who studies how indigenous peoples used plants for healing in order to find viable new medication prospects. Her lab is in charge of the Quave Natural Product Library, which houses thousands of botanical and fungal natural products isolated from plants collected across the world.

The latest paper’s primary author is Caitlin Risener, a PhD candidate in Emory’s Molecular and Systems Pharmacology graduate programme and the Center for the Study of Human Health.

Previously, the Quave lab focused on plants that traditional people had used to treat skin irritation in order to find promising compounds for the treatment of drug-resistant bacterial infections. Because Covid-19 is a novel illness, the researchers used a comprehensive approach.

They developed a technique for speedily testing over 1,800 extracts and 18 compounds from the Quave Natural Product Library for SARS-CoV-2 activity. “We’ve shown that our natural products library is a powerful tool to help search for potential therapeutics for an emerging disease,” Risener said, adding, “Other researchers can adapt our screening method to search for other novel compounds within plants and fungi that may lead to new drugs to treat a range of pathogens.”

SARS-CoV-2 is an RNA virus with a spike protein that may connect to a protein on host cells called ACE2. “The viral spike protein uses the ACE2 protein almost like a key going into a lock, enabling the virus to break into a cell and infect it,” Quave explains.

The researchers designed studies using SARS-CoV-2 virus-like particles, or VLPs, and cells modified to overexpress ACE2 on their surface. The VLPs were stripped of the genetic material required to infect Covid-19. Instead, if a VLP was able to connect to an ACE2 protein and enter a cell, it was programmed to hijack the cell’s machinery, causing a fluorescent green protein to be activated.

Before injecting the virus particles, a plant extract was applied to the cells in a petri dish. They could rapidly tell whether the viral particles had entered the cells and activated the green protein by placing a fluorescent light on the dish.

The researchers found a few hits for extracts that protect against viral entrance and then focused on the ones with the highest activity: tall goldenrod and eagle fern. Both plant species are native to North America and have long been used for medical purposes by Native Americans.

Additional tests revealed that the plant extracts’ protective capacity was effective against all four SARS-CoV-2 variants: alpha, theta, delta, and gamma. The Quave lab collaborated with co-author Raymond Schinazi, Emory professor of paediatrics, director of Emory’s Division of Laboratory of Biochemical Pharmacology, and co-director of the HIV Cure Scientific Working Group within the NIH-sponsored Emory University Center for AIDS Research, to further test these findings.

Schinazi is a world expert in antiviral research, well recognised for his groundbreaking work on breakthrough HIV medications. Because of the Schinazi lab’s superior biosecurity rating, the researchers were allowed to test the two plant extracts in trials utilising infectious SARS-CoV-2 virus instead of VLPs. The findings validated the potential of tall goldenrod and eagle fern extracts to block SARS-ability CoV-2’s to attach to and infect live cells.

“Our results set the stage for the future use of natural product libraries to find new tools or therapies against infectious diseases,” Quave said. The researchers are now attempting to pinpoint the precise method through which the two plant extracts inhibit ACE2 protein binding.

One of the most enjoyable aspects of the endeavour for Risener was collecting samples of tall goldenrod and eagle fern herself. The Quave lab, in addition to collecting medicinal plants from throughout the world, does field visits to the woods of the Joseph W. Jones Research Center in South Georgia. The Woodruff Foundation built the institute to help maintain one of the few remains of the once-dominant southern longleaf pine ecosystem.

“It’s awesome to go into nature to identify and dig up plants,” Risener said, adding, “That’s something that few graduate students in pharmacology get to do. I’ll be covered in dirt from head to toe, kneeling on the ground and beaming with excitement and happiness.”

She also helps to prepare plant extracts and mount specimens for the Emory Herbarium. “When you collect a specimen yourself, and dry and preserve the samples, you get a personal connection,” she said, adding, “It’s different from someone just handing you a vial of plant material in a lab and saying, ‘Analyze this.'”

Risener plans to pursue a career in outreach and education for science policy related to natural chemical research after graduation. Some of the more well-known botanical medications include aspirin (derived from the willow tree), penicillin (derived from fungus), and the cancer treatment Taxol (from the yew tree).

“Plants contain such chemical complexity that humans probably couldn’t imagine of all the botanical chemicals that are yet to be found,” Risener said, adding, “The huge therapeutic potential of plants underscores the need of ecosystem preservation.”

According to sources, the National Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (NTAGI) met on February 8 to discuss the inclusion of Covid-19 vaccine Covovax as a heterologous booster dose for adults on the CoWin portal in order to increase dose uptake. The Serum Institute of India (SII) also wrote to the Union Health Ministry in January, requesting that its Covid vaccine Covovax be included on the CoWIN portal.

The Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) approved the Serum Institute of India (SII) COVID jab Covovax as a heterologous booster dose on January 16.

Last week the government drug regulatory authority Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) recommended market authorisation for Serum Institute of India’s Covid vaccine Covovax as a heterologous booster dose for those who have already taken two doses of Covishield or Covaxin.

Earlier, DCGI had approved Covovax for restricted use in emergency situations in adults on December 28, 2021, for ages between 12-17 on March 9, 2022, and also for children who come under 7- 11 years on June 28, 2022, subject to certain conditions.

Covovax is manufactured through technology transfer from Novavax. It has been approved by the European Medicines Agency for conditional marketing authorization. It was granted an emergency-use listing by the World Health Organization (WHO) on December 17, 2021.

Recently, Bharat Biotech’s nasal Covid vaccine for adults above 18 years old had been launched by the Government of India and its batches were also released.
The vaccine is available in private hospitals.
iNCOVACC is the world’s first Intranasal Vaccine to receive both Primary series and Heterologous booster approval.

To keep COVID death figures in China low, the Chinese government has enacted a modification in laws and procedures requiring doctors to hide COVID-related mortalities or postpone updating them on death certificates, according to Voices Against Autocracy (VAA).

Authorities in China have also ceased including COVID deaths that happened outside of hospitals to the official statistics. In the face of mounting international pressure, China announced that around 60,000 COVID-related deaths occurred between early December and mid-December 2022. The figure is significant in light of China’s death toll of about 5,000 since the start of the coronavirus pandemic.

According to VAA, many people believed the true figure was significantly higher and accused Beijing of underreporting. Even the World Health Organization (WHO) requested China to provide “more detailed” statistics, expressing worry over the country’s under-reporting of the severity of viral epidemics.

COVID infections began to rise in China near the end of December, and hospitals began to fill up. Many patients were unable to find beds and were observed sleeping on the floor. Even funeral homes and crematoriums were entirely full, with lines stretching for days. The Chinese government, on the other hand, has stayed mute on the growing number of COVID sufferers. The administration ceased providing routine health alerts, creating uncertainty about the COVID situation.

However, a social media post by famous Chinese scientist and government official Wu Zunyou indicated that more than 80% of China’s population was infected with COVID. The Chinese government, according to VAA, has issued warnings and circulars instructing doctors not to identify COVID as a cause of death. “On the death certificate, we fill in one main cause of death, and two to three sub-causes of death, so we basically leave out COVID,” a doctor at a Shanghai-based hospital explained.

According to Liaoning Province doctor Liu Chen (pseudonym), government restrictions prohibit them from counting COVID patients’ deaths owing to exacerbation of underlying conditions as COVID deaths. “T stanhat is thedard we all have to follow. So, from the top to the bottom, no one knows the exact mortality rate of COVID,” he said, as quoted by VAA.
According to complaints received from people, deaths following COVID in China are being labelled as “heart diseases”, “pneumonia” or “underlying disease”.

According to Song Guo-cheng, a researcher at National Chengchi University, the latest death figures announced by Beijing are still suspicious. “The information obtained from various sources and online reports is in sharp contrast with the COVID figures disclosed by the Chinese Communist Party. This underscores that the CCP is still playing with the data, covering up the true scale of the outbreak,” Song said.

According to CNN, Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida stated on Friday that the nation will consider reducing Covid-19 to the same category as seasonal influenza.

Kishida stated that he has directed his administration and the Health Ministry to investigate the implications of the action. The CNN article stated that Japan is still dealing with 100,000 coronavirus infections each day. Covid is currently ranked second, alongside TB and avian influenza. Furthermore, officials intend to place it sixth, equivalent to seasonal influenza, according to CNN, citing Japan’s Health Ministry.

“In order to further advance the efforts of ‘living with Corona’ and restore Japan to a state of normalcy, we will transition the various policies and measures to date in phases,” Kishida said.

In October last year, Japan reopened its borders to foreigners which were closed since last year. This ended one of the strictest border controls in the world, according to CNN.

The risk of death or hospitalization from Covid-19 is greatly reduced for most people due to high levels of vaccination and population immunity from previous infections, the United States Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has said.

On the other hand, World Health Organization still counts Covid as a Pandemic and reiterated in its latest update a recommendation for people to wear masks following recent exposure or close contact with Covid-19, and for “anyone in a crowded, enclosed, or poorly ventilated space” to do the same.

Prior to this, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus urged states last week to continue sharing coronavirus sequencing data, citing the importance of detecting and tracking the development and spread of novel variations.

Although it is obvious that nations cannot sustain the same degree of testing and sequencing that existed under the Omicron variation, the WHO director stated that this is not the case. However, we cannot ignore the Covid menace and expect it to go away.

Prior to this, a Japanese health specialist issued a dire warning, predicting that the number of daily new coronavirus infections will skyrocket after mid-January, perhaps breaking the previous record.

According to Toho University Professor Tateda Kazuhiro, who serves on the government’s coronavirus advisory council, the daily Covid tally might approach the Japanese government’s prior forecast of 4,50,000 cases nationally.

On January 6, the Japanese health ministry verified 456 coronavirus-related fatalities across the country, the largest single-day toll since the outbreak began. The previous high was 420 on December 29, 2022.