Coronavirus live updates: Rapid tests to be given to poorer countries, WHO says

The Mumbai leg of Oxford University’s global Covid-19 vaccine trial began with three men in the 25-45 age group getting vaccinated on Saturday afternoon at the BMC-run KEM Hospital, Parel. The men were kept under observation for a few hours before they left the hospital. The trial for the Covishield vaccine, developed by Oxford University along with pharmaceutical major AstraZeneca, will involve 200 volunteers in Mumbai.

Can statins – cholesterol-lowering drugs — help reduce severity of the disease in Covid-19 patients? At least two recent studies, published in American Journal of Cardiology (AJC) and The EMBO Journal, support this theory. Statins are widely available and cheap, costing around Rs 5 to Rs 50 per tablet, depending on the dosage.

World Health Organization (WHO) chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has lauded Prime Minister Narendra Modi's assurance that India will use its vaccine production capacity in helping nations fight COVID-19, saying the pandemic can be defeated only by mobilising resources for common good.

Under the 'Dial a Doctor' programme, more than 300 doctors across the globe and from different specialties and sub-specialties provide voluntary health services to the patients.

Italy's coronavirus Patient No. 1, whose case confirmed one of the world's deadliest outbreaks was underway, is taking part in a 180-kilometer (112-mile) relay race in memory of Covid victims and as a sign of hope after he himself recovered from weeks in intensive care. Mattia Maestri was suited up Saturday for the start of the two-day race between Italy's first two virus hotspots.

Subsequently, the testing cost of swab samples sent from the government to private labs has been reduced from Rs 1,500 to Rs 1,200. “As rates of RT-PCR testing have come down, the Task Force Committee has reconsidered the rates to be charged by private labs,” said Jawaid Akhtar, additional chief secretary, health and family welfare department.

The seven-day average of daily Covid-19 cases in India has been steadily falling for nine consecutive days from September 17 to September 26, the first time such a phase of continuous decline has been witnessed since the beginning of the outbreak. Even more hearteningly, this is despite the seven-day average of tests having increased from 10.7 lakh on September 17 to 11.2 lakh on September 25, the last date for which data is available.

The district administration has decided to change the testing strategy as Covid-19 cases shoot up. It has been decided to test all symptomatic and vulnerable people who are contacts of positive cases.To create awareness and encourage symptomatic people to come forward for testing, services of rapid response teams (RRT) have been constituted at ward levels in each local body. Asymptomatic primary contacts of the positive cases will not be tested. But they will have to undergo mandatory 14 days quarantine.

The daily Covid-19 positive tally in the state hit 7,006 on Saturday as per the official figures announced by the office of health minister K K Shailaja. The Covid-19 causalities on the day was 21, taking the official death figures to 657. Among those tested positive on Saturday, 68 had come from foreign countries and 177 from other states. As many as 6,004 persons contracted the disease through local contacts and the sources were unknown in the case of 664 patients. The number of health workers tested positive was 93.

With the number of active cases continuously increasing in Jaipur, the state government in coordination with private hospitals, is now aiming at developing 2,000 beds within a week for Covid-19 treatment. Health minister Raghu Sharma has already stated that there is a need to increase infrastructure facilities in Jaipur, as the active cases are rising. On Friday, Sharma had directed the in-service private hospitals at Jaipur, Jodhpur, Kota, Udaipur, Ajmer and Bikaner district headquarters to keep 30 per cent beds reserved out of their total bed capacity, for corona-infected patients.

After a two-day breather, Maharashtra was back to reporting over 20,000 cases. On Saturday it added 20,419 cases and 430 fatalities, the fourth day in a row that it saw over 400 deaths. With this, the total cases in the state came to 13,21,176, and the total fatalities stand at 35,191, having crossed the 35,000 mark.Covid cases in Mumbai shot up by over 20% in a 24-hour period as 2,282 patients reported positive on Saturday as compared to 1,876 the previous day. The city’s total tally since March climbed to 1.96 lakh.