Health

Mumbai, Jun 24 (PTI) The Maharashtra government told the Bombay High Court on Thursday that a statewide committee will be constituted by Friday (June 25) to address the issue of rising air pollution owing to increase in instances of cremation following deaths due to COVID-19.

Advocate General Ashutosh Kumbhakoni made the submission before a bench of Chief Justice Dipankar Datta and Justice GS Kulkarni.

Wellington, Jun 25 (AP-PTI) Parts of Sydney will go into lockdown late Friday as a coronavirus outbreak in Australia's largest city continued to grow.

Health authorities reported an additional 22 locally transmitted cases and imposed a weeklong lockdown in four areas, saying people could leave their homes only for essential purposes.

The outbreak of the highly contagious delta variant was first detected last week, and 65 people have been infected.

BERLIN (AP) — German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Thursday that Europe is “on thin ice” in its battle against the coronavirus, as the highly contagious delta variant threatens to undo progress made in reducing infections.

In what may be her last government declaration to the German parliament, Merkel said the further response to the pandemic would be a main topic of discussion among European Union leaders at a meeting in Brussels on Thursday.

She noted that the number of COVID-19 cases in the 27-nation bloc continue to decline, while vaccination rates climb.

23 June 2021; MEMO: The defence lawyers representing ousted Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir have asked to transfer him from Kober Central Prison to a private hospital for examination because it is suspected that he may have Covid-19, state television has reported. Bashir is in the prison to the north of Khartoum serving time on a number of charges.

Islamabad, Jun 23 (PTI) Pakistan has received another two million doses of a China-made coronavirus vaccine, as the country hopes to enhance its immunisation drive.

A special flight of Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) PK-6852 airlifted two million doses of Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine from the Beijing Capital International Airport to Islamabad on Tuesday.

It is in addition to 1.55 million doses of Sinovac vaccines from China to Pakistan on Sunday.

New Delhi, Jun 22 (PTI) An expert panel of the country's central drugs authority has reviewed and accepted the phase-3 trial data of Bharat Biotech's COVID-19 vaccine Covaxin, sources said on Tuesday.

According to the data submitted by the Hyderabad-based firm, the indigenously developed vaccine has shown 77.8 per cent efficacy in the trial conducted on 25,800 subjects, they said.

22 June 2021; MEMO: A yoga class was held on the beach in Gaza to help paramedics deal with some of the trauma they suffered during Israel's latest bombing campaign which came to an end on 21 May.

Lucknow, Jun 22 (PTI) Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav on Tuesday accused the Uttar Pradesh government of hiding the actual number of deaths due to COVID-19.

Through this, he said, the BJP government is actually hiding its face.

Yadav's remarks came a day after a report claimed that the death toll due to COVID-19 in 24 districts of Uttar Pradesh from July 1, 2020 to March 31, 2021 was up to 43 times higher than the official figures.

New Delhi, Jun 22 (PTI) Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday released a "white paper" by the party on the Centre's Covid management and urged the government to prepare for the third wave of coronavirus.

Releasing the "white paper", the former Congress chief said it is clear that the management of the first and second wave of COVID-19 was "disastrous".

WASHINGTON, June 21 (Xinhua) -- While the White House claimed milestone of administering over 300 million COVID-19 vaccine shots in the first 150 days since U.S. President Joe Biden took office, the highly contagious Delta variant continues threatening the country, especially in states with the lowest vaccination numbers.

About 45.1 percent of the U.S. population is fully vaccinated against COVID-19, and 53.3 percent of the population has received at least one shot as of Sunday, according to latest data of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).