Covid News Live: Mumbai has one COVID-19 case with no deaths; the active tally stands at 40

According to a civic official, Mumbai recorded only one COVID-19 case on Wednesday, bringing the total to 11,55,218 cases, while the death toll remained unchanged at 19,747.

Covid News Live: Fed’s Powell tests positive for COVID, has ‘mild’ symptoms

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell tested positive Wednesday for COVID-19 and is experiencing “mild symptoms,” the Federal Reserve announced. Powell is “up to date” with all COVID vaccines and boosters, the Fed said, and is working from home.

Covid News Live: The Lunar New Year is supposed to be a time of celebration for Chinese families, but this year the festival will be much more solemn for many in the country as they remember those who died during the recent COVID wave

Covid News Live: According to China’s Xi, COVID containment is still under threat

According to state media CCTV, China’s President Xi Jinping, the country’s COVID-19 prevention and control is still under stress, but the light is on the horizon.

Covid News Live: Serum Institute of India seeks inclusion of its Covid jab ‘Covovax’ in CoWIN portal as heterologous booster dose for adults who have been administered 2 doses of either Covaxin or Covishield

Covid News Live: Nuggets coach Michael Malone enters COVID protocol

The Denver Nuggets announced Tuesday night that coach Michael Malone entered the NBA’s health and safety protocol. Malone will miss Tuesday’s game against the visiting Portland Trail Blazers. Assistant coach David Adelman will serve in his place, the team said. Malone, 51, has amassed a 344-254 record since taking over as the team’s head coach in 2015. He received a multiyear contract extension last March. Denver is tied for first place in the Western Conference with the Memphis Grizzlies (30-13) entering Tuesday’s action.

Covid News Live: India’s pragmatic response to pandemic-triggered crises ensured moderate inflation, high growth, says Vaishnaw

Covid News Live: China Covid reopening set to push oil demand to new high, says IEA

Covid News Live: Hong Kong leader aims to lift all Covid restrictions this year

Hong Kong leader John Lee said on Wednesday he aims to lift all Covid-19 restrictions within this year and lead the global financial hub towards a full return to normality. Most restrictions have already been lifted apart from the wearing of masks.

Covid News Live: Lunar New Year rush starts in China after virus rules lifted

Hairdresser Wang Lidan is making an emotional Lunar New Year journey from Beijing to her hometown in northeastern China her first in three years after the government lifted its strict “zero-COVID” policy that kept millions of people at home and sparked protests. The relaxation of restrictions let loose a wave of pent-up travel desire, particularly around China’s most important time for family gatherings. Referred to in China as the Spring Festival, it may be the only time of the year when urban workers return to their hometowns. The Chinese government expects over 2.1 billion journeys to be made during a 40-day travel period around New Year’s Day, which falls on Sunday.

Covid News Live: Luxury group Richemont’s sales miss forecasts after China sales plunge

Richemont reported higher quarterly sales on Wednesday as tourists returned to Europe and Japan, but the luxury group missed market estimates after sales in China plunged by almost a quarter. American tourists took advantage of the stronger dollar to buy their Cartier jewellery and Swiss watches outside the United States in the December quarter, leading to a sharp rise in sales in Europe and Japan. But the mainland Chinese market – which accounts for about a fifth of the group’s sales according to Zuercher Kantonalbank estimates – struggled as COVID-19 cases surged during the period, Richemont said.

Covid News Live: China’s economy grows 3% in last year; lowest in years following Covid restrictions

The Chinese economy had one of its worst performances in decades last year as growth was dragged down by numerous COVID lockdowns followed by a deadly outbreak in December that swept across the country with remarkable speed. China grew 3% for the year, numbers released Tuesday show, much less than in 2021 and far short of Beijing’s target of 5.5%. Other than 2020, it was the most disappointing showing since 1976, the year Mao Zedong died, when the economy declined 1.6%. The government’s strict “zero COVID” restrictions cast a pall over 2022, strangling the economy with frequent quarantines, regional lockdowns and massive spending to pay for widespread testing. Then on Dec. 7, China lifted the policy without warning after nearly three years. Within weeks, the virus had infected hundreds of millions of people, killed many older residents and left factories, offices and restaurants bereft of workers and customers.

Covid News Live: Burberry’s sales growth slows to 1% as Covid in China weighs

British luxury brand Burberry’s like-for-like sales growth slowed sharply to 1% in the quarter to end-December as COVID-19-related disruption in mainland China offset a stronger performance in Europe. Analysts were expecting a 2% rise, according to a company-supplied consensus.

Covid News Live: Few takers for needle-free booster dose

With the central government making nasal Covid-19 vaccine available as a booster dose, hesitancy has been observed for the needle-free vaccine. The intranasal medication, recently given a green flag by Union health ministry, is administered as a nose drop. Experts say it is capable of enhancing immunity. It not only stops reproduction of the virus at the entry point, but helps stop transmission. In a national survey by LocalCircles, a community platform and pollster on public issues, between January 1 and January 14 in which 3,320 individuals in the age group of 18 and above participated from Punjab (1,423), Haryana (1,106) and Himachal Pradesh (791), the majority of them were not willing to take the dose. The less likelihood of resurgence of a severe Covid wave at this point, and a spate of deaths due to cardiac arrests and heart attacks, were the main reasons given by respondents for not opting for the booster dose.

Covid News Live: India reports 128 new Covid cases

India logged 128 new coronavirus infections, while the active cases declined to 1,998, according to the Union Health Ministry data updated on Wednesday.

Covid News Live: India’s death toll from Covid

The death toll stands at 5,30,728, with one each reported from Karnataka and Maharashtra, the data updated at 8am stated.

Covid News Live: Chinese citizens who lost relatives to Covid angry at failure to protect elderly

As hundreds of millions of Chinese travel to reunite with families for the Lunar New Year holiday starting Jan. 21, many will do so after mourning relatives who died in the COVID-19 wave that has raged across the world’s largest population. For many, bereavement is mixed with anger over what they say was a lack of preparation to protect the elderly before China suddenly abandoned its “zero-COVID” policy in December 2022 after three years of testing, travel restrictions and lockdowns.

Covid News Live: China stares at 36K Covid deaths a day during holidays this month

China may see nearly a staggering 36,000 deaths a day during Lunar New Year holidays, data analytics company Airfinity has forecast. The Lunar New Year festival began on January 7 and the holidays are set to begin on January 21. According to reports, Airfinity has now added 11,000 more deaths a day to its December 29, 2022, estimates.

Covid News Live: Millions of Chinese workers on the move ahead of Friday travel peak

Millions of urban workers were on the move across China on Wednesday ahead of the expected Friday peak of its Lunar New Year mass migration, as China’s leaders looked to get its COVID-battered economy moving. Unfettered when officials last month ended three years of some of the world’s tightest COVID-19 restrictions, workers streamed into railway stations and airports to head to rural hometowns, sparking fears of a broadening virus outbreak.

Covid News Live: Active Covid cases in country decline to 1,998

India logged 128 new coronavirus infections, while the active cases declined to 1,998, according to the Union Health Ministry data updated on Wednesday. The Covid case tally was recorded at 4.46 crore (4,46,81,361). The death toll stands at 5,30,728, with one each reported from Karnataka and Maharashtra, the data updated at 8 am stated.

Covid News: UP gets fresh supply for Covishield vax doses

Uttar Pradesh has received a fresh supply of 42,700 Covidshield vaccine doses after a gap of 13 days. The stock reached Uttar Pradesh Medical Supplies Corporation Limited from the Union government that released it immediately for vaccination. District immunization officer Dr M.K. Singh said: “With fresh supplies, Covid-19 vaccination will start from Wednesday at 34 centres, including KGMU, SGPGI and RMLIMS and 12 district hospitals and 19 urban and rural community health centres.”

Covid News Live: 3 new COVID-19 case in Thane; active tally at 12

Maharashtra’s Thane district has reported three new COVID-19 cases, taking its infection count to 7,47,418, a health official said on Wednesday. With the addition of the latest numbers on Tuesday, the district currently has 12 active COVID-19 cases, he said. No death was reported on Tuesday, and the number of fatalities in the district so far was 11,969, the official said. The count of recoveries stood at 7,36,208, he added.

Covid News Live: In China, no easy way to get Pfizer’s COVID drug Paxlovid

Chinese authorities have acknowledged that supplies of Paxlovid are still insufficient to meet demand, even as Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said last week that thousands of courses of the treatment were shipped to the country last year and in the past couple of weeks millions more were shipped. Paxlovid – a combination of two anti viral drugs – is one of the few foreign oral treatments approved by Beijing and a clinical trial has found it to have reduced hospitalisations in high-risk patients by around 90%. Having been approved in February last year, Paxlovid was scarcely used in China until December when the government started lifting its strict containment policy, and wave of COVID infections began to build.

Covid News Live: U.S. airlines do not see speedy return of China, Japan travel demand

A group representing major U.S. airlines said Tuesday it does not foresee a return of significant international passenger air travel demand from either China or Japan before the end of March and sought an extension of a waiver of some U.S. COVID-19 international route requirements. Airlines for America, a trade group representing major U.S. carriers, told the U.S. Transportation Department (USDOT) that airlines “do not foresee significant and certain international passenger growth in either China or Japan before” the expiration of a current USDOT waiver. The group added ticket sales for the U.S.-China market as of December remained 88% below 2019 levels, adding passenger demand for both markets remains “severely depressed.”

Covid News Live: China’s pessimistic Gen Z poses challenge for Xi post-COVID

The first weekend after COVID-19 restrictions ended last month, dozens of young Chinese jostled in the dark at a heavy-metal concert in a tiny Shanghai music venue that reeked of sweat and hard liquor. It was the kind of freedom young Chinese had demanded in late November in protests against the zero-COVID policy that became the biggest outpouring of public anger in mainland China since President Xi Jinping took power a decade ago. After three years of lockdowns, testing, economic hardship and isolation, many of China’s Generation Z — the 280 million born between 1995 and 2010 — had found a new political voice, repudiating their stereotypes as either nationalist keyboard warriors or apolitical loafers.

Covid News Live: Authorities report first Covid fatality in Mumbai

After nearly a month with no reported deaths, the city has recorded a fatality due to Covid-19. The BMC announced that a 68-year-old man has passed away, marking the first reported Covid death in the city this year. The previously recorded death in Mumbai was on December 22.

Covid News Live: SARS-CoV-2: Bio-weapon or natural pandemic?

The SARS-CoV-2, better known as COVID-19 is mired under controversy about whether it was a man-made disaster or a natural pandemic, writes Thu Dao, a Hanoi-based journalist and worked as a content manager and strategist at Foreign Affairs Newsdesk in Tuoi Tre in Indo-Pacific Center for Strategic Communications (IPCSC). There are good reasons to be concerned about Chinese work in biotechnology that could be unethical and alarming. Although Beijing has never admitted to a developed bio-weapons programme, in the past China has reportedly produced biological weapons that include weaponized ricin, botulinum toxins and causative agents for anthrax, cholera, plague and tularaemia in violation of the Biological Weapons Convention of 1972 that declares the development, production, and stockpiling of bio-weapons a war crime, reported IPCSC.

Covid News Live: Mexico sees ‘slight rise’ in Covid-19 deaths, hospitalisations: Authorities

Mexico has registered 12 straight weeks of an increase in Covid-19 cases, with a “slight rise” in deaths and hospitalisations, Undersecretary of Prevention and Health Promotion Hugo Lopez-Gatell said. There was a “big contrast” between the number of infections and the number of deaths, he stressed on Tuesday, thanks to a nationwide vaccination campaign against Covid-19 launched at the end of 2020. “The good news throughout this recent wave and the previous one is that there is a big contrast between the increase in cases and the slight rise in hospitalisations and deaths,” Lopez-Gatell told the media.

Covid News Live: US reports 26,000 weekly child Covid-19 cases

Nearly 26,000 child Covid-19 cases were reported in the US in the week ending January 12, according to the latest report by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the Children’s Hospital Association. This is a decrease from the previous week, but likely an undercount that increased during the holidays and in 2023, according to the report. Nearly 15.3 million children in the country have tested positive for Covid-19 since the onset of the pandemic. More than 140,000 of these cases have been added in the past four weeks, Xinhua news agency reported.