COVID-19

ICMR reported that Covishield and Covaxin vaccines are effective against the UK and the Brazilian variants of coronavirus, and several laboratories are involved in work against South African strain. Addressing a weekly press conference of the Union health ministry, ICMR Director-General Balram Bhargava also said of 11,064 genome samples sequenced in the country, the UK variant of the virus was detected in 807, the South African variant in 47 and the Brazilian variant was found in one.

The main mandate of IBSD is Conservation and Sustainable Utilization of Bioresources for the socio-economic Development of the North East Region of India, which is a genetic treasure trove of plants, animals and microbial resources.

The coronavirus’ structure is an all-too-familiar image, with its densely packed surface receptors resembling a thorny crown. These spike-like proteins latch onto healthy cells and trigger the invasion of viral RNA. While the virus’ geometry and infection strategy is generally understood, little is known about its physical integrity.

It has not been confirmed that the reports of blood clots were caused by the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine. People should still go and get their COVID-19 vaccine when asked to do so.

Dr Phil Bryan, MHRA Vaccines Safety Lead said:
The benefits of the vaccine in preventing COVID-19, with its associated risk of hospitalisation and death, far outweigh the risks of side effects. People should go and get their COVID-19 vaccine when asked to do so

New research at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis indicates that three new, fast-spreading variants of the virus that cause COVID-19 can evade antibodies that work against the original form of the virus that sparked the pandemic. With few exceptions, whether such antibodies were produced in response to vaccination or natural infection, or were purified antibodies intended for use as drugs, the researchers found more antibody is needed to neutralize the new variants.

Vir Biotechnology, Inc and GlaxoSmithKline plc provided an update on the VIR-7831 (GSK4182136) arm of the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) Accelerating COVID-19 Therapeutic Interventions and Vaccines (ACTIV) Program Phase 3 clinical trial. The companies were informed that while VIR-7831 met initial pre-specified criteria to continue to the next phase of the ACTIV-3 trial and there were no reported safety signals, sensitivity analyses of the available data raised concerns about the magnitude of potential benefit.

Johnson & Johnson announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for its single-dose COVID-19 vaccine, developed by the Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson, to prevent COVID-19 in individuals 18 years of age and older.

Innovators at Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Bhopal have developed a unique ‘Crowd and Mask’ Monitoring System to prevent COVID-19 from spread. This one-of-its-kind low cost Artificial Intelligence (AI)-enabled device is portable and easy to deploy across various locations, says a statement released by the institution.

The Laboratory was established in 1941 as a research and production centre, known as Drug Research Laboratory of J&K State and was later taken over by Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR) of Govt. of India in December 1957 as Regional Research Laboratory, Jammu. In view of its core strength in natural products based drug discovery, the mandate of Institute was redefined in 2005 and its name changed to Indian Institute of Integrative Medicine (IIIM)