Coronavirus in India live updates: Centre, Bharat Biotech invite other companies to scale up Covaxin production

“WHO should have the powers necessary to investigate outbreaks of concern, speedily guaranteed rights of access, and with the ability to publish information without waiting for member state approval,” a panel member said. The panel also suggested that WHO's director-general — currently Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus of Ethiopia — should be limited to a single seven-year term. As it stands, the WHO chief is elected to a five-year term that can be renewed once.

In a report released Wednesday, the panel faulted countries worldwide for their sluggish response to COVID-19, saying most waited to see how the virus was spreading until it was too late to contain it, leading to catastrophic results. The group also slammed the lack of global leadership and restrictive international health laws that “hindered” WHO's response to the pandemic.

The catastrophic scale of the Covid-19 pandemic could have been prevented, an independent global panel concluded Wednesday, but a "toxic cocktail" of dithering and poor coordination meant the warning signs went unheeded. The Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response (IPPPR) said a series of bad decisions meant Covid-19 went on to kill at least 3.3 million people so far and devastate the global economy.

The Government of India (GoI) on Wednesday clarified that World Health Organization (WHO) has not associated the term "Indian Variant" with the B.1.617 variant of the coronavirus in its weekly epidemiological update on the pandemic. "This is to clarify that WHO has not associated the term "Indian Variant" with the B.1.617 variant of the coronavirus in its 32-page document. In fact, the word 'Indian' has not been used in its report on the matter," said

An 80-bed COVID care center in Chhatarpur at Terapanth Bhawan of South Delhi has been set up by the alumni of top education and health Institutions like IIM, IIT, AIIMS, AIR foundation to provide all kinds of health facilities to fight the second wave of the pandemic.

The Centre on Wednesday clarified that the World Health Organisation (WHO) has not associated the term “Indian Variant” with the B.1.617 variant of the coronavirus.

The Assam government on Wednesday ordered shutting down of all offices, religious places and weekly markets for 15 days in urban and semi-urban areas of the state, besides banning movement of people from 2 pm to 5 am in the wake of rising Covid-19 cases.

A day after Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and Andhra Pradesh CM YS Jaganmohan Reddy urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to allow other companies to manufacture Covaxin and Covishield to tide over the vaccine crunch, Bharat Biotech has termed the complaints as “disheartening”.