World Health Organization (WHO) epidemiologist and technical lead on Covid-19 Dr Maria Van Kerkhove in a recent press briefing stressed that the pandemic is far from over and future variants will be in some way more virulent than Omicron is now.
WHO's incident manager Abdi Mahamud stated that 130 million cases and 500,000 deaths had been registered worldwide since Omicron was declared a variant of concern in late November.
Over 1.72 lakh people recovered from Covid-19 in the last 24 hours, taking the total recoveries to 4,10,12,869 and India’s recovery rate to 96.7 per cent.
The surge in Covid-19 cases in January due to the new variant Omicron is now declining in many states in India.
The vaccine ZyCoV-D is a three-dose intradermal vaccine using the PharmaJet needle-free system.
As per the Health Ministry, 2,62,628 people recovered from the coronavirus infection in the last 24 hours, totalling 3,89,76,122.
The WHO claimed that they are aware of the new virus variant developing, but it requires further study to ascertain if it poses a risk to humans.
India's caseload stands at 4,08,58,241, while the active cases are 20,04,333. The active cases declined by 1,01,278 since the last 24 hours.
India's Covid vaccination coverage has now crossed 164.35 crore doses. According to Health Ministry, 95 per cent of the adult population has been administered the first dose, while 74 per cent are fully vaccinated.
Veena George said continuous sequencing of the Covid positive samples are being done, and almost 94 per cent of the samples test positive for Omicron and 6 per cent for delta.
