Coronavirus Highlights: India Records 15,102 New Covid Cases

Veteran Maharashtra politician Sharad Pawar and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee exchanged notes over a phone call on Wednesday following the arrest of his party leader and minister Nawab Malik in a money laundering case, sources have told NDTV.

The call lasted for about 10 minutes during which, the Trinamool Congress chief expressed her support and solidarity.

Mr Pawar, sources said, asked her if she had suspended her ministers who were arrested last year by the CBI in connection with the Narada case. He also enquired about how she had handled the episode.

Highlighting the nation's fight against COVID and efforts to become self-reliant in vaccination, Dr Padma Srivastava, Head, Department of Neurology and Neurosciences Centre, AIIMS on Wednesday said India has emerged as a winner in COVID management and showcased the rise of the human spirit.

The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on Wednesday organized a live online session on the topic "Importance of Vaccination and COVID management" with Dr Padma Srivastava.

The issues related to COVID management, vaccination, long-term symptoms and effects were also discussed during the session. Various queries of the participants were also addressed during the session.

Speaking about the current COVID situation in the country, Dr Srivastava said, "I feel so proud that I belong to a Nation that has been integrally a front runner in COVID management. Our country has showcased so much positivity and has emerged as a winner. I believe that COVID continues to teach us a lot of things, but most importantly, it also showcases the rise of the human spirit."

Chinese President Xi Jinping's deployment of an army general to take charge of Wuhan labs makes it clear that Xi was never transparent about the origin of the virus and it was merely to set false narratives, reported Providence.

Chinese Communist Party (CCP) media quoted a fake Swiss virologist and in another incident, a Chinese journalist was put in jail for documenting the Wuhan lockdown.

It is apparent that the world needs to probe China. China has tried also started a trade war with Australia after Canberra called for an independent investigation into the COVID origins.

The World Health Organization (WHO) on Wednesday said it has set up a hub in South Korea to train low- and middle-income countries to produce their own vaccines and therapies and is expanding its COVID-19 vaccine project to further five nations.

The new training hub comes after the U.N. agency set up a technology transfer hub in Cape Town, South Africa, last year to give companies from poor and middle-income countries the know-how to produce COVID-19 vaccines based on mRNA technology.

The new hub will provide workforce training to all countries wishing to produce products such as vaccines, insulin, monoclonal antibodies, the WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during a press briefing.

A two-year-old boy suffered multiple organ dysfunction days after recovering from COVID-19 and spent around 16 days on a ventilator as specialists at a private hospital here worked towards restoring his kidneys, heart and lungs to normal function.

After recovering from COVID-19, the kid developed a cough in December last year, which swiftly progressed to high fever and breathing problems. His parents rushed him to a local hospital, but his condition worsened. When the child started choking, the family shifted him to Aakash Healthcare, Dwarka, where he suffered a cardiac arrest.

The BA.2 variant of the Omicron coronavirus strain is not more severe than the original, the World Health Organization said on Tuesday.

Based on a sample of people from various countries, "we are not seeing a difference in severity of BA.1 compared to BA.2," Maria Van Kerkhove, a senior WHO official, said in an online question and answer session.

"So this is a similar level of severity as it relates to risk of hospitalisation. And this is really important, because in many countries they've had a substantial amount of circulation, both of BA.1 and BA.2," she said.

The world should provide millions of doses of Covid-19 vaccines to North Korea, where "draconian" anti-pandemic measures are worsening an already-severe food crisis, a UN human rights expert said Wednesday.

The impoverished nation has been behind a rigid self-imposed coronavirus blockade since early 2020 to protect itself from the pandemic, with the economy suffering and trade all but stopped.

The country's "draconian" anti-Covid measures, including border closures and further limits on domestic freedom of movement, have worsened the food crisis, Tomas Ojea Quintana, UN special rapporteur on human rights, said.

Crucial domestic market activity has been cut off, and international aid workers have been forced to depart, with humanitarian operations all but halted, he said, adding that vulnerable populations were at risk of starvation.

The international community should "agree on a strategy to provide the DPRK with 60 million doses of vaccination to cover at least two shots for the entire population," Quintana said at a press briefing in Seoul Wednesday.

On a request for a return to full physical hearings in the Supreme Court, Chief Justice Of India NV Ramana today called Omicron a "silent killer" and said he was still suffering after catching the virus nearly a month ago.

"Omicron is a silent killer, you know. I suffered in the first wave but recovered in four days, but now, in this wave, it has been 25 days and I am still suffering," Chief Justice Ramana said.

His remarks came after senior lawyer Vikas Singh, who heads the Supreme Court Bar Association, requested the Supreme Court to revert to full physical hearings, with cases dipping. Currently, hearings are taking place in a hybrid style, with physical hearings twice a week and the rest online.