India Narrative

A team of Indian scientists has developed a new technology platform for fluorometric detection of SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19) that is more reliable than the existing techniques, according to information provided by the Ministry of Science and Technology.  The technology platform detects viruses by measuring the fluorescent light that is emitted and can also be used to detect other DNA/RNA pathogens such as HIV, influenza, HCV, Zika, Ebola, bacteria, and other mutating pathogens. Scientists from Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, an autonomous institute of the government, along with scientists from IISc (India Institute of Science), have demonstrated a noncanonical nucleic acid-based G-quadruplex (GQ) topology targeted reliable conformational polymorphism (GQ-RCP) platform to diagnose Covid-19 clinical samples. This work has been published recently in the journal ‘ACS Sensors’ and the team has also filed a patent for the novel technology. Read More  

  The simultaneous spread of the Delta and Omicron variants of the coronavirus is creating a "tsunami of cases" that continue to put immense pressure on health systems that are already on the brink of collapse, the WHO warned on Wednesday. "Delta and Omicrom are now twin threats driving up cases to record numbers, leading to spikes in hospitalisation and deaths," WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a press conference. He said the pressure on health systems was not only due to new coronavirus patients, but also large numbers of health workers falling ill with Covid. The WHO said over 6.5 million cases new cases had been recorded worldwide in the week between Dec 22-28, while the United States and France both registered a record number of daily infections on Wednesday. Tedros said countries must share vaccines more equitably and warned that the emphasis on boosters in richer countries could leave poorer nations short of doses. Read More

  The heavily mutated Omicron variant of coronavirus is spreading faster than the Delta variant and is infecting people who have been fully vaccinated, the WHO chief has said. "There is now consistent evidence that Omicron is spreading significantly faster than the Delta variant," WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a press conference in Geneva on Monday. "And it is more likely people vaccinated or recovered from COVID-19 could be infected or re-infected," he added. WHO chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan said it would be "unwise" to conclude from early evidence that Omicron was a milder variant than the other strains. The variant is successfully evading some immune responses, she said, meaning that the booster programmes being rolled out in many countries ought to be targeted towards people with weaker immune systems. Their comments come at a time when the Omicron variant is surging in the UK, USA and other European countries such as t

  The World Health Organization has warned that the Omicron variant of COVID-19 is spreading at an unprecedented rate and urged countries to act WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told journalists that the strain had been reported in 77 countries and had probably spread to most nations undetected "at a rate we have not seen with any previous variant". At the same time the WHO on Tuesday also gave reason for some optimism, saying Africa had recorded a massive rise in cases over the past week but the number of deaths were lower than the previous waves. However, it urged countries to act swiftly to rein in transmission and protect their health systems and warned against complacency. WHO expert Bruce Aylward emphasised against "jumping to a conclusion that this is a mild disease". "We could be setting ourselves up for a very dangerous situation," he added. Omicron, first identified by South Africa and reported to the WHO in late November, has over 30 spike

  Chief WHO scientist Soumya Swaminathan has cautioned against knee-jerk reactions to early studies that hinted the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine may have reduced efficacy against the new variant. She pointed out that the studies done so far were small and that the reduction in the "neutralising activity" varied dramatically between different studies. five fold in some experiments to up to 40-fold in others. They also only looked at the neutralisation of antibodies, when "we know the immune system is much more complex than that," she said. "So I think it's premature to conclude that this reduction neutralising activity would result in a significant reduction in vaccine effectiveness," she said. "We do not know that." The WHO experts stressed the importance of vaccination , highlighting that even if vaccines prove less effective against Omicron, as some data indicates, they are still expected to provide significant protection against severe disease.

  Existing vaccines will still protect people who contract the Omicron variant from severe Covid-19 cases, according to a top World Health Organization (WHO) official. "We have highly effective vaccines that have proved effective against all the variants so far, in terms of severe disease and hospitalisation, and there's no reason to expect that it wouldn't be so for Omicron,” Dr Mike Ryan, the WHO's emergencies director, told AFP news agency. His observation comes at a time when the first lab tests of the heavily mutated new variant in South Africa suggest it can partially evade the Pfizer vaccine. Researchers say there was a "very large drop" in how well the vaccine's antibodies neutralised the new strain. But Ryan said there was no sign Omicron would be better at evading vaccines than other variants. He also said that initial data suggested that the COVID-19 symptoms in the case of Omicron were less severe than the Delta and other strains. Scientists