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Intermittent fasting has previously been proven to provide a variety of health advantages, including a reduced risk of diabetes and heart disease. Intermountain Healthcare researchers have discovered that persons who fast on a daily basis are less likely to have serious COVID-19 problems.

In a new study published this week in BMJ Nutrition, Prevention & Health, Intermountain researchers found that COVID-19 patients who practiced regular water-only intermittent fasting had lower risk of hospitalization or dying due to the virus than patients who did not.

“Intermittent fasting has already shown to lower inflammation and improve cardiovascular health. In this study, we’re finding additional benefits when it comes to battling an infection of COVID-19 in patients who have been fasting for decades,” said Benjamin Horne, PhD, director of cardiovascular and genetic epidemiology at Intermountain Healthcare.

Researchers at Intermountain Healthcare discovered people registered in the INSPIRE registry, a voluntary health registry, who had also tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 between March 2020 and February 2021 – before vaccinations were widely accessible.

They found 205 people who tested positive for the infection. Seventy-three percent of those polled claimed they fasted at least once a month. Researchers discovered that people who fasted on a regular basis had a decreased likelihood of coronavirus hospitalisation or death.

“Intermittent fasting was not associated with whether or not someone tested positive COVID-19, but it was associated with lower severity once patients had tested positive for it,” Dr. Horne said.

In the Intermountain study, participants who said they regularly fasted did so for an average of more than 40 years. Intermountain researchers had the opportunity to closely study this specific cohort of long-time intermittent fasters because a large portion of its patients fast regularly for religious reasons.

Nearly 62 percent of Utah’s population belongs the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, whose members typically fast the first Sunday of the month by going without food or drink for two consecutive meals.

Intermittent fasting linked to better Covid outcomes

While Dr. Horne said that more research is needed to understand why intermittent fasting is associated with better COVID-19 outcomes, he said it’s most likely due to a host of ways that it affects the body.

For example, fasting reduces inflammation, especially since hyperinflammation is associated with poor COVID-19 outcomes. In addition, after 12 to 14 hours of fasting, the body switches from using glucose in the blood to ketones, including linoleic acid.

Also Read: Researchers uncovered how wastewater provides early detection of Covid-19 virus

“There’s a pocket on the surface of SARS-CoV-2 that linoleic acid fits into — and can make the virus less able to attach to other cells,” he said.

Another potential benefit is that intermittent fasting promotes autophagy, which is “the body’s recycling system that helps your body destroy and recycle damaged and infected cells,” Dr. Horne added.

Dr. Horne stressed that these results are from people who have been practicing intermittent fasting for decades — not weeks — and that anyone who wants to consider the practice should consult their doctors first, especially if they are elderly, pregnant, or have conditions like diabetes, heart, or kidney disease.

Researchers at Intermountain Healthcare discovered people registered in the INSPIRE registry, a voluntary health registry, who had also tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 between March 2020 and February 2021 – before vaccinations were widely accessible.

They found 205 people who tested positive for the infection. Seventy-three percent of those polled claimed they fasted at least once a month. Researchers discovered that people who fasted on a regular basis had a decreased likelihood of coronavirus hospitalisation or death.

Researchers also stressed intermittent fasting shouldn’t be seen as a substitute for COVID vaccination.

“It should be further evaluated for potential short and long-term preventative or therapeutic use as a complementary approach to vaccines and anti-viral therapies for reducing COVID-19 severity,” Dr. Horne said.

Source: Intermountain Healthcare

Scientists and clinicians reveal how wastewater sequencing gave significant new insights on SARS-CoV-2 levels and variants on campus and in the wider community – a critical step toward public health interventions ahead of COVID-19 case spikes.

Scientists and physicians from the University of California San Diego and Scripps Research, along with local and federal public health officials, describe how wastewater sequencing provided dramatic new insights into SARS-CoV-2 levels and variants on campus and in the broader community – a critical step toward public health interventions ahead of COVID-19 case surges.

Importantly, the authors stated that the strategy, which was implemented by UC San Diego as part of its Return to Learn activities and then more generally in the surrounding region, offers a scalable, cheaper, and faster option for towns and regions to identify the coronavirus and respond appropriately.

“The coronavirus will continue to spread and evolve, which makes it imperative for public health that we detect new variants early enough to mitigate consequences,” said co-senior study author Rob Knight, PhD, professor and director of the Center for Microbiome Innovation at UC San Diego.

“Before wastewater sequencing, the only way to do this was through clinical testing, which is not feasible at large scale, especially in areas with limited resources, public participation or the capacity to do sufficient testing and sequencing. We’ve shown that wastewater sequencing can successfully track regional infection dynamics with fewer limitations and biases than clinical testing to the benefit of almost any community.”

Whether or whether they have symptoms, people with COVID-19 shed the virus in their faeces. Knight and colleagues took use of this fact in the summer of 2020, when they began robotic wastewater sampling on the UC San Diego campus.

“The university’s Return to Learn program was conceived and built on three pillars: viral detection, risk mitigation and intervention,” said UC San Diego Chancellor and study co-author Pradeep K. Khosla. “Nothing like this had been done before. Sampling and detection efforts began modestly, but grew steadily with increased research capacity and experience. Currently, we’re monitoring almost 350 buildings on campus.”

The initiative has proven to be a success. COVID-19 case rates on campus were considerably lower than in surrounding areas when students returned in mid-2020. In March 2021, wastewater surveillance expanded to a regional level, with numerous samples sequenced each week from San Diego County’s principal wastewater treatment plant at Point Loma, which serves a catchment of 2.3 million people.

“The wastewater program was an essential element of UC San Diego’s response to the COVID pandemic,” said Robert Schooley, MD, professor in the Department of Medicine at UC San Diego School of Medicine, co-lead of the Return to Learn program and a study co-author. “It provided us with real-time intelligence about locations on campus where virus activity was ongoing.

“Wastewater sampling essentially allowed us to ‘swab the noses’ of every person upstream from the collector every day and to use that information to concentrate viral detection efforts at the individual level.”

Central to these efforts was SEARCH (San Diego Epidemiology and Research for COVID Health), which brought together scientists from UC San Diego, Scripps Research and Rady Children’s Hospital-San Diego to develop methods for viral tracking, including improved concentration of viral RNA in wastewater and an algorithm called “Freyja,” described in the published research.

SEARCH scientists can now reliably evaluate the genetic combination of SARS-CoV-2 variants present in just two tablespoons of raw sewage and identify new “variants of concern” up to 14 days before standard clinical testing. The Omicron variety was discovered in wastewater 11 days before it was first reported clinically in San Diego.

“In many regions, normal clinical surveillance for novel variations of concern is not only sluggish, but also exceedingly expensive,” said Kristian Andersen, PhD, Scripps Research professor of immunology and microbiology and co-senior author with Knight. “However, with Freyja, you can take a single wastewater sample and profile the entire city.”

In August 2021, Smruthi Karthikeyan, PhD, an environmental engineer and postdoctoral researcher in Knight’s lab, and colleagues published data showing that wastewater sequencing on campus enabled early detection of 85 percent of COVID-19 cases.

Later that year, working with county, state and federal public health agencies, UC San Diego researchers began issuing warnings when viral loads in regional wastewater reached certain levels. These increases usually signaled a corresponding spike in COVID-19 cases one or two weeks later.

“The idea is to put everybody on alert that a surge is coming, and act accordingly: Get vaccinated if you’re not vaccinated. Get boosted. Wear a mask. Think twice about attending large indoor gatherings,” said Knight. “It’s a chance to avoid a surge that translates into more patients in hospitals and morgues.”

The wastewater sequencing project involved many players and considerable expertise, from disease modelers and epidemiologists to virologists and genomics specialists to public health officials, educators and civic leaders. Participating institutions included UC San Diego Health, Scripps Research, Scripps Health, Sharp Healthcare, the County of San Diego Health and Human Services Agency, the California Department of Public Health and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Knight’s lab deployed commercial auto-sampling robots to collect wastewater samples, which were analyzed for levels of SARS-CoV-2 RNA by his lab, sequenced by the EXCITE (EXpedited COVID-19 IdenTification Environment) lab at UC San Diego, with further computational analysis conducted at Andersen’s lab at Scripps Research.

RNA sequencing from wastewater has two specific benefits: First, it avoids the potential of clinical testing biases, such as limited or non-representative samples, and second, it can track changes in prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 variants over time.

But identifying particular viral lineages present, including new variants, requires sequencing of viruses’ genomes — their complete set of genetic instructions.

During the study period, researchers collected and analyzed 21,383 wastewater samples: 19,944 samples from the UC San Diego campus and, for comparison, 1,475 samples from the greater San Diego area, including the Point Loma plant, and 17 public schools in four San Diego school districts.

Genomic sequencing of wastewater

Genomic sequencing of 600 campus wastewater samples was compared to 759 genomes obtained from campus clinical swabs, all processed by the Center for Advanced Laboratory Medicine (CALM) at UC San Diego Health or the EXCITE Laboratory at UC San Diego.

Additionally, the researchers compared 31,149 genomes from clinical genomic surveillance of the greater San Diego community to sequencing of 837 wastewater samples collected from San Diego County (including those from the UC San Diego campus).

Also Read: Poor physical and mental health in older adults linked to childhood trauma: Study

“The Safer at School Early Alert (SASEA) project used wastewater surveillance to support more than 40 socially vulnerable elementary schools and childcare sites throughout the pandemic,” said study co-author Rebecca Fielding-Miller, PhD, assistant professor and infectious disease epidemiologist at the Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science at UC San Diego.

“By deploying the rapid and affordable techniques developed at UC San Diego as part of a comprehensive public health intervention, SASEA allayed parent and child anxiety by ‘making the invisible visible.’ And because neighborhood schools serve specific communities, wastewater monitoring with genetic surveillance can give researchers and public health officials the tools to rapidly identify new outbreaks, tailoring their response to meet the community where they are, geographically and culturally.”

Mutational differences between SARS-CoV-2 variants, such as between Delta and Omicron, are often quite small and subtle, though they may result in notable biological changes, such as transmissibility or severity of symptoms. The later Omicron variant proved more transmissible than the Delta variant, and was better able to evade the human immune system and vaccines. However, the average duration of illness was shorter and symptoms less severe with Omicron.

Joshua Levy, PhD, a Scripps Research postdoctoral fellow and co-first author with Karthikeyan, developed a library of “barcodes” to identify SARS-CoV-2 variants based on short snippets of RNA unique to each variant. He created a new computational tool that sifts through the mass of genetic information in wastewater to find these barcodes. The resulting program — Freyja — is free and already widely used by public health agencies for wastewater surveillance.

“If you’re in a lab that can already sequence a wastewater sample, you’re good to go,” he said. “You just run this code and in another 20 seconds, you’re done.”

As the pandemic continues, so too does the SEARCH project and wastewater sequencing, evolving like the virus to improve upon existing tools and, perhaps, apply lessons learned to other human pathogens that threaten public health and to other pandemics to come.

“We know that other pathogens, ranging from influenza to monkeypox, can be detected in wastewater,” said Knight. “Working with county, state and national public health organizations to expand this system beyond SARS-CoV-2 will revolutionize our ability to respond not just to this pandemic, but to future ones.”

Source: University of California – San Diego

According to a new study by University of Toronto researchers, older people who were physically abused as children and developed trauma were far more likely to have chronic pain and chronic physical ailments later in life. They exhibited a twofold greater chance of developing depression and anxiety disorders compared to individuals who did not encounter this early trauma.

The study’s findings were published in the journal ‘Aging and Health Research.’

The findings of the research were published in the journal ‘Aging and Health Research’. “Sadly, our findings suggest that the traumatic experience of childhood physical abuse can influence both physical and mental health many decades later. It also underlines the importance of assessing for adverse childhood experiences among patients of all ages, including older adults,” said Anna Buhrmann, who began this research for her undergraduate thesis in the Bachelor of Arts and Science program at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario and is a research assistant at the Institute of Life Course & Aging at the University of Toronto.

Also Read: Scientists find brain pathway that helps to explain light’s effect on mood

Diabetes, cancer, migraines, arthritis, heart disease, diabetes, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease were among the physical ailments that occurred (COPD). Even after controlling for poverty, education, smoking, binge drinking, and other risk factors, the associations between childhood maltreatment and poor physical and mental health persisted.

“Health professionals serving older adults need to be aware that it is never too late to refer people for counselling. A promising intervention, cognitive behavioral therapy [CBT], has been tested and found effective at reducing post-traumatic stress disorder and depressive and anxiety symptoms among survivors of childhood abuse,” said co-author Professor Esme Fuller-Thomson, who supervised Buhrmann’s thesis research.

Fuller-Thomson is the Director of the Institute of Life Course & Aging at the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work at the University of Toronto.

The cross-sectional study was unable to identify the particular routes via which physical maltreatment as a kid impacts an individual’s health later in life. According to current research, childhood physical abuse causes a number of physiological changes, including dysregulation of systems that govern the body’s reaction to stress.

Future study into disturbances to these systems, which are already connected to a variety of medical and mental diseases, such as elevated cortisol levels, may provide insight on the experience of childhood abuse victims.

This study’s data came from a representative sample of persons aged 60 and above in the Canadian province of British Columbia. It contrasted 409 older persons who had a history of childhood physical abuse to 4,659 of their contemporaries who had not been physically assaulted as children. The information came from the Canadian Community Health Survey.

What is childhood trauma?

“Childhood trauma” refers to a scary, dangerous, violent, or life threatening event that happens to a child (0-18 years of age). This type of event may also happen to someone your child knows and your child is impacted as a result of seeing or hearing about the other person being hurt or injured. When these types of experiences happen, your child may become very overwhelmed, upset, and/or feel helpless. These types of experiences can happen to anyone at any time and at any age; however, not all events have a traumatic impact.

A traumatic experience is one that is frightening, hazardous, or violent. When we confront or see an urgent threat to ourselves or a loved one, it can be distressing, and it is frequently followed by significant damage or harm (NCTSN Parents and Caregivers Website). This might result in feelings such as dread, loss, or distress.

People may experience these forms of powerful unpleasant emotions in response to an encounter or because they lack the capacity to defend or prevent the event from occurring. Reactions to a traumatic experience can have long-term consequences for an individual’s everyday functioning, including changes in a child’s mental, physical, social, emotional, and/or spiritual health.

A better knowledge of the neurological network that connects light-sensitive cells in the retina to cortical brain areas involved in mood and cognition has implications for the development of mood-disorder therapies.

The researchers employed functional MRI in a recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences to explain how light-intensity signals reach the brain and how brain regions involved in mood interpret those signals. The study found that some areas of the cerebral cortex involved in cognitive processing and mood are sensitive to light intensity.

The discovery has implications for understanding mood problems like seasonal affective disorder and major depressive disorders, as well as how to treat them, said lead study author Jerome Sanes, a Brown professor of neuroscience affiliated with the University’s Carney Institute for Brain Science.

“Identifying this pathway and understanding its function might directly promote development of approaches to treat depression, either by pharmacological manipulations or non-invasive brain stimulation in selected nodes of the pathway or with targeted bright-light therapy,” Sanes said.

The findings build on previous research by study co-author David Berson, a Brown professor of neuroscience, who in 2002 discovered special light-sensing cells in the eye. Unlike rods and cones, these “intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells” are not involved in what’s known as “object vision” or “form vision,” Sanes said, but mainly function to sense light intensity.

Previous studies, including some by Berson, discovered that some animals had a mood-regulating neuronal network connecting these photosensitive retinal cells to parts of the prefrontal cortex implicated in mood disorders. According to Sanes, the new study was designed to see if a similar pathway existed in humans and if they could find evidence that the pathway was functionally similar to light-sensitive retinal ganglion cells.

The researchers employed functional MRI to investigate whole-brain activation patterns in 20 healthy people to see if a light-intensity-encoding route regulates the human prefrontal cortex.

According to Sanes, participants in a relatively basic experiment watched four different degrees of light intensity through goggles that diluted light and erased visual forms, colours, and other things in the surroundings. For 30 seconds each, participants watched light intensities ranging from dim to brilliant. To keep them attentive, scientists gave them an auditory assignment in which they had to tell the difference between two tones.

The researchers found 26 human brain areas whose activity dropped or increased in response to light intensity by analysing functional MR images collected during the workout. This “luxotonic-related activation” occurred throughout the cerebral cortex, several subcortical structures, and the cerebellum, covering areas with visual image generation, motor control, cognition, and emotion functions.

They discovered that light reduced activity in the prefrontal cortex in proportion to the intensity of the light. The light-evoked responses in the prefrontal cortex, as well as their modification by prior light exposure, were similar to the responses of intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells.

Changes in ambient illumination that do not necessarily have anything to do with form or object perception are well-known to impact several basic processes, including as circadian cycles, visual reflexes, mood, and possibly cognitive processing, according to Sanes. However, how these light-intensity signals reached the critical parts of the human brain remained unknown.

Also Read: Less sex during menopause transitin not associated to sexual pain: Study

The researchers demonstrated that light-sensitive signals exist in the prefrontal regions of the human brain, and that these signals are similar to intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells – which, according to Sanes, may explain the effects of light intensity on complex emotional and cognitive behaviours.

“The findings from our study offer a functional link between light exposure and prefrontal cortex-mediated cognitive and affective responses,” Sanes said.

One next logical question to ask, Sanes said, concerns how light affects these same brain pathways and regions in people with mood disorders like seasonal affective disorder or major depressive disorders.

“How does that compare to a control group of healthy people not diagnosed with these disorders?” he asked. “Does light activate the same regions, and if so, are these regions more or less sensitive to light activation? What is the magnitude of difference in the effect? This is an area of ongoing investigation,” he said, adding that the answers could inform the development of therapeutic treatments for mood disorders.

According to a new study, having sex less frequently during the menopause transition is not associated with an increased risk of experiencing discomfort during intercourse.

The study’s findings were published in the journal ‘Obstetrics and Gynecology.’ This 13-year research investigated whether a decrease in sex frequency is responsible for women’s experiences of sexual discomfort throughout the menopausal transition. The study also looked into other characteristics that might be linked to sexual discomfort.

“Women have been told by the popular media and some physicians that if you ‘don’t use it, you’ll lose it,’ meaning if women don’t remain sexually active, especially through the menopause transition, they will lose the ability to have comfortable sex. But this study provides some empirical evidence against this popular notion,” said Elaine Waetjen, primary investigator of the study and professor of obstetrics and gynecology at UC Davis Health.

Painful intercourse has been reported in 20% to 59% of perimenopausal and postmenopausal women. The Study of Women’s Health Across the Nation (SWAN), a multicenter, multiracial, and multiethnic prospective study of the menopausal transition, collected questionnaire data annually throughout the first ten visits. Those between the ages of 42 and 52 who identified as Black, Hispanic, Japanese, Chinese, or White were eligible for this study.

Over the course of 13 years, 1,087 (48.4%) of the 2,247 women who had no sexual discomfort at the start acquired sexual pain at least “occasionally.” At each visit, participants filled out questionnaires on their sexual practices, genital or urinary problems, and pain during sexual activity.

Also Read: Chronic stress makes forgiveness easier, study suggests

Some of the study’s other findings:
1. Women were most at risk for developing sexual pain in late perimenopause and postmenopause, independent of age.
2. Use of systemic hormone therapy did not appear to reduce this risk of developing sexual pain.
3. Reporting of vaginal dryness had the strongest association with developing pain.
4. Engaging in oral sex and having a higher frequency of arousal were associated with a reduced chance of developing sexual pain.
5. History of sexual trauma was not associated with sexual pain among this older cohort.

Russian researchers investigated the relationship between personality authenticity (being oneself) and the ability to forgive under various levels of stress.

They discovered that those who are under chronic stress are more likely to forgive, but persons who are under daily stress are less likely to do so. The capacity to forgive encourages sincerity. The study’s findings, which were published in the journal Clinical Psychology and Special Education, can be applied to life coaching programmes.

Authenticity—the capacity to “be oneself”—helps people cope with many life challenges. The ability to forgive—to transcend a sense of offence by the person who inflicted harm or challenging life circumstances—also contributes to psychological well-being.

Despite the relevance of these phenomena in personality psychology research, their relationship has received little attention. The ability to forgive is just now being studied in Russian personality psychology, and nearly no publications on its relationships to other positive personality phenomena have been published.

There have been no studies that look at genuineness, forgiveness as a moral characteristic, or stress levels. Professor Sofya Nartova-Bochaver of the HSE Faculty of Social Sciences collaborated with colleague Violetta Park to investigate how stress affects sincerity and the ability to forgive. The researchers examined 140 young men and women aged 16 to 40 to identify the links.

Chronic stress cohort

In terms of stress levels, the respondents belonged to various cohorts. They included the relatively well-off (students from a teacher training university living in Moscow), the cohort experiencing daily stress as a result of routine responsibilities (students at one of Moscow’s international classical universities), and the chronic stress cohort caused by a severe trauma with irreversible consequences (patients of a rehabilitation centre with severe spinal injuries). Standardized questionnaires were used in the research.

According to the findings, persons who are under chronic stress had the highest levels of authenticity. The outcomes for the relatively well-off patients are average, whereas the results for the everyday stress cohort are the lowest. The same patterns apply to forgiveness.

Researchers attribute the heightened proclivity to forgive among members of the chronic stress group to the post-traumatic growth effect. Despite the fact that these people are physically dependent on others, that their typical body feelings have changed, and that many abilities have been lost, they are more likely to realise their true purpose in life and the most essential values.

They feel ‘more like themselves’ and are able to disregard the multiple misfortunes and imperfections in life by means of forgiveness in order to move on.

Representatives of the’relatively well-off’ cohort adapt rapidly to themselves and the world, have a moderate level of sincerity, and are prepared to forgive others, themselves, and the challenges that life throws at them.

The everyday stress cohort had the least ability to forgive and the least sincerity. Because of the ‘invisibility’ and ‘unimportance’ of everyday difficulties, these people are likely ignorant to their daily stress until their reaction to it surges. This is why people who believe they can manage everyday stress well become exhausted and too demanding of themselves and others.

Also Read: NEET UG 2022: NTA to release admit card soon

The researchers also investigated how stress levels affect authenticity and the ability to forgive. These phenomena are often positively correlated: persons who exhibit mercy and forgiveness to others or who live in unpleasant circumstances are more likely to experience the authenticity of their own personality; however, the degree of this association varies according to stress.

Authenticity has absolutely no link with the ability to forgive in the chronic stress cohort; rather, it appears that they develop concurrently. For the relatively well-off and those experiencing everyday stress, forgiveness of oneself has become the most significant requirement for experiencing authenticity; yet, researchers have only discovered the great relevance of forgiving life circumstances and occurrences in the everyday stress group.

The stronger one’s ability to forgive oneself and one’s circumstances, as well as one’s willingness to forget about revenge or restore justice, the truer and more real-life people live.

The researchers found that the ability to forgive does contribute to feelings of authenticity, but the variables that generate it may fluctuate depending on the degree of stress and the type of stress.

The National Testing Agency (NTA) is likely to announce admission cards for the NEET UG 2022 exam, which is scheduled to take place on July 17, 2022. Candidates will be able to get their admission cards from the official website – neet.nta.nic.in – once they are available. Aspirants should be aware that the NTA has already issued early notification of test city slips for NEET-UG applicants on the official website on June 28, 2022.

Nearly 18 lakh students have registered for the NEET UG entrance examination this year for admission to MBBS, BDS, BAMS, BSMS, BUMS, BHMS, and other UG medical courses in approved and recognised Medical, Dental, AYUSH, and other Colleges, deemed Universities, and Institutes in India such as AIIMS and JIPMER.

Also Read: Scientists urge centre to closely watch new Covid sub-variant BA-2.75

Scientists encouraged the Union Health Ministry on Thursday to keep a careful eye on a new Covid-19 subvariant dubbed BA-2.75 hours after the World Health Organization mentioned it for the first time, but they cautioned that it would be premature to worry.

The variation is present in at least ten Indian states, including Karnataka, Maharashtra, and West Bengal, as well as seven other nations, despite the fact that India’s Covid genome analysis group (INSACOG) has yet to issue a declaration on the novel variant’s count and distribution.

“So far BA-2.75 is like other Omicron sub-variants i.e. more transmissible but showing mild disease. But it’s still early days,” virologist Shahid Jameel, Research Fellow at Green Templeton College, University of Oxford told a daily.

“It possibly evades immunity better than its parent BA.2 due to additional mutations in neutralising antibody binding sites on spike protein and also binds a little better to the ACE2 receptor (a protein that provides an entry point to the coronavirus to hook onto a cell). This needs to be watched.”

Tedros Ghebreyesus, director general of the World Health Organisation on Wednesday spoke about the new variant emerging from India for the first time. “In countries like India a new sub lineage of BA.2.75 has also been detected, which we’re following,” he said.

Also Read: NHA announces inclusion of over 1 lakh health facilities under Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission’s Health Facility Registry

Scientists from India’s SARS-CoV-2 Consortium on Genomics (INSACOG) are to meet here on Friday to take stock of the situation and appraise the ministry. “At the moment, there is no correlation between the new strain and the rate of hospitalisation, which remains low. But we are keeping track of clinical developments,” said an INSACOG member, who did not wish to be identified.

Among the new strains, the scientist said, BA-5 was the most virulent, but it was not spreading much in India, where the dominating strains are BA-2 and its variants. “We are in the endemic phase and the virus is evolving,” he said.

Covid surge

For over three weeks, India has reported more than 10,000 new Covid-19 cases every day, despite a low number of hospitalizations. On certain days, the number of new cases might reach 17,000-18,000.

Although more than 90% of India’s adult population has received two doses of the Covid-19 vaccine, adoption of the third preventive dosage is poor. According to WHO Chief Scientist Soumya Swaminathan, there are still a limited number of (genome) sequences of the sub-variant available for analysis.

“But this sub-variant seems to have a few mutations on the receptor-binding domain of the spike protein, a key part of the virus that attaches itself to the human receptor. We have to watch. It’s still too early to know if this sub-variant has properties of additional immune evasion or indeed of being more clinically severe. We don’t know that,” she said in a video message.

More than one lakh health care facilities across government and private sector have been successfully onboarded in the Health Facility Registry (HFR) under the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM), as per an announcement by National Health Authority (NHA). This historic milestone paves the way for greater adoption of digital health platform and services across the country.

ABDM is the flagship scheme of government being implemented by National Health Authority (NHA). Health Facility Registry (HFR) which is being built under the ABDM is a comprehensive repository of health facilities of the country across modern and traditional systems of medicine. It includes both public and private health facilities including hospitals, clinics, diagnostic laboratories and imaging centers, NHA stated.

The ABDM aims to create a seamless online platform that will enable interoperability within the digital healthcare ecosystem. ABDM has developed building blocks and interoperable APIs (Application Programming Interface) to offer a seamless digital healthcare experience for all stakeholders – health facilities, patients and healthcare professionals. One of the key building blocks is the Health Facility Registry.

Elaborating on the significance of HFR, Dr. R.S. Sharma, CEO, NHA said – “Our aim is to build a trusted national platform where patients can easily get details of registered healthcare professionals and health facilities across the country. We have seen enthusiastic participation of both public and private sector health facilities which have now become a part of this national registry. Patients can easily search the ABDM network for registered facilities across different systems of medicine like modern medicine (Allopathic), Ayurveda, Dentistry, Homeopathy, Physiotherapy, Unani, Siddha or Sowa Rigpa.

Similarly, we have the ABHA numbers for patients and Healthcare Professionals Registry (HPR) for professionals like doctors, nurses and paramedics. These national registries will help in making quality healthcare accessible and affordable for all.”

Registration in HFR allows listing of the health facilities on a trusted national platform and enables health facilities to get connected to India’s digital health ecosystem through ABDM compliant software solutions. This will help citizens seeking healthcare services by improving the discovery of health facilities through soon to be launched Unified Health Interface. Facilities can register through the website https://facility.abdm.gov.in/ or through various integrators such as health-tech players.

Also Read: Covid-19 Updates: 18,815 cases recorded in India

Among the verified facilities, around 97% belongs to government sector. Highest number of verified health facilities are in the states of Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal, Chhattisgarh and Assam. More details on the verified/ registered facilities under the HFR based on their ownership (public or private), systems of medicine and the state/ UT wise performance are available on the ABDM public dashboard https://dashboard.abdm.gov.in/abdm/.

The charts show daily, monthly and cumulative trends in the progress of this national level registry.

Each health facility in the registry has a unique identifier, which is used to map the facility across the ABDM ecosystem and provide comprehensive data on all private and public health facilities in the country. This unique identifier can be utilized (via consented-access) by other entities such as ABDM compliant software solutions to identify the facility, retrieve and use required facility data for required purposes.

India registered 18,815 new COVID infections in the last 24 hours as per the information provided by the Union Health Ministry on Friday. Meanwhile, the death toll rose to 5,25,34, with 38 new fatalities.

As per the data, the total active cases of COVID-19 in India have risen to 1,22,335 with a percentage of 0.28%.

With 15,899 recoveries in the last 24 hours, the total recoveries rose to 4,29,37,876, bringing the current recovery rate at 98.51%.

Daily positivity rate currently stands at 4.96%, while weekly positivity rate stands at 4.09%.

With 3,79,470 tests conducted in the last 24 hours, 86.57 cr total tests have been conducted so far, according to the ICMR.

Covid vaccination

India’s cumulative vaccine coverage has exceeded 198.51 Cr .

According to the data provided by the Union Health Ministry, more than 193.53 crore (1,93,53,58,865) doses have been provided to States and UTs.

In light of developing scientific facts and worldwide standards, the Union Health Ministry altered the interval between the second COVID vaccination dosage and the precautionary dose from 9 months to 6 months on Wednesday.

In June, the NTAGI’s Standing Technical Subcommittee (STSC) proposed shortening the gap between the second and precaution doses of COVID-19 vaccination.