Covid India Updates: What is Sinopharm vaccine that WHO listed for emergency use?

Temple church in Hyderabad converted to Covid facility.

Ambulance rally day in Siliguri to spread COVID protocol awareness.

C17 Globemaster is on its way to Mumbai with 35 tonnes of medical equipment.

India cumulatively has so far received three lakh Remdesivir vials, 6,608 oxygen concentrators, 3,856 oxygen cylinders and 14 oxygen generation plants from the global community in the last 12 days. The global community has also dispatched 4,330 ventilators or Bi PAP to India from April 27 to May 7.

The major items received on Friday from the US-India Strategic Partnership Forum (USISPF), Switzerland, Poland, the Netherlands and Israel include Oxygen Concentrators (2,060), Remdesivir (30,000), Ventilators (467), and Oxygen Generation Plants (three).

-- IANS

MyGovIndia, a citizen engagement platform of the Government of India on Twitter shared a 5 step sample meal plan to boost your immunity and help you recover from post Covid fatigue.

Here's a 5-step sample meal plan suggested to boost immunity amidst COVID!

A total of 14,88,528 beneficiaries in the age group of 18 to 44 years have so far received their first dose of Covid-19 vaccine across 30 states and UTs. The maximum of 3,08,171 beneficiaries in the third phase vaccination are reported from Maharashtra followed by Rajasthan (2,49,315), Gujarat (2,47,652), Delhi (2,41,870), Haryana (2,04,101) and Uttar Pradesh (1,02,407). The third phase of the Covid vaccination started on May 1 covering people aged between 18 and 44 years.

There are 35,152 beneficiaries in the age group of 18 to 44 from Odisha followed by Assam (33,693), Jammu and Kashmir (26,161), Tamil Nadu (10,703), Madhya Pradesh (9,833), Karnataka (8,681), West Bengal (4,123), Punjab (2,785) and Chhattisgarh (1,026),

Only 934 people of the age group have received Covid vaccines in India's famous tourist state Goa so far, Andaman and Nicobar Islands (663), Telangana (498), Bihar (291), Andhra Pradesh (148), Kerala (112), Ladakh (86), Jharkhand (81), Uttarakhand (19) and Himachal Pradesh (14).

Only one beneficiary has been reported from Puducherry so far while there are two beneficiaries each in Chandigarh, Meghalaya, Nagaland and Tripura.

Cumulatively, 16,73,46,544 vaccine doses have been administered, as per the latest report of the Union Health Ministry.

(IANS)

The production of Liquid Medical Oxygen (LMO) has been maximized to meet the present demand of Covid-19 patients and the domestic production currently exceeded 9,400 Metric Tonne per day, the government said on Saturday. Giridhar Aramane, Secretary, Ministry of Road, Transport and Highways informed while presenting the current scenario of LMO production, allocation and supply during the 25th meeting of the high-level Group of Ministers (GoM) on Covid-19 through video-conference.

Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan chaired the meeting that was also virtually attended by External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar, Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep S. Puri, Minister of State for Ports, Shipping and Waterways and Fertilizers Mansukh Mandaviya, Minister of State for Home Nityanand Rai, and Minister of State for Health Ashwini Kumar Choubey. Vinod K. Paul, Member (Health), NITI Aayog was present virtually.

Drugs Controller General of India approves anti-COVID drug developed by DRDO for emergency use. 

Two indigenous herbal medicines have been found useful in the treatment of mild to moderate Covid-19 infection, the Ministry of AYUSH (Ayurveda, Yoga & Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy) has said.

Indian scientists have found Kaphasura Kudineer, a siddha poly-herbal preparation consisting 15 herbal ingredients, and Ayush-64, a poly-herbal formulation developed by Central Council for Research in Ayurvedic Sciences (CCRAS), Ministry of Ayush, useful in the treatment of asymptomatic, mild and moderate Covid infection, and effective in immunity boosting as well.

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A record 4,187 COVID-19 fatalities in a day took India's death toll to 2,38,270, while 4,01,078 new infections were reported during the period, pushing the tally of cases to 2,18,92,676, according to Union Health Ministry data on Saturday.

Ministry of Health & Family Welfare shares an illustrative guide of 15 preventive behavioural practices which are critical to winning the fight against coronavirus.

The World Health Organisation listed the Sinopharm COVID19 vaccine for emergency use in all countries. It is a prerequisite for a potential COVAX roll-out. WHO tweeted, "The Sinopharm #COVID19 vaccine is the first to carry a vaccine vial monitor, a small sticker on the vaccine vials that changes color as the vaccine is exposed to heat, letting health workers know whether the vaccine can be safely used."

It added, "The emergency use listing procedure assesses the quality, safety & efficacy of #COVID19 vaccines, as well as risk management plans & programmatic suitability, such as cold chain requirements. For the Sinopharm vaccine, on-site inspections of the production facility were conducted."

Researchers at Johns Hopkins have found that two doses of a vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 -- the virus that causes COVID-19 -- confers some protection for people who have received solid organ transplants, it's still not enough to enable them to dispense with COVID safety measures including masks and physical distancing. 

"While there was an increase in those with detectable antibodies -- 54 per cent overall -- after the second shot, the number of transplant recipients in our second study whose antibody levels reached high enough levels to ward off a SARS-CoV-2 infection was still well below what's typically seen in people with healthy immune systems," says study lead author Brian Boyarsky, M.D., a surgery resident at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

(ANI)