India yet to see new, more infectious, strain of Covid-19 detected in UK, its daily cases increase 22%

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A security personnel checks the body temperature of a visitor. (Photo courtesy: IANS)

(TibetanReview.net, Dec23’20) – The new variant of coronavirus discovered in the UK can be a “super spreader” with its higher transmissibility potential though the mutation has not been detected in India and is not seen to affect the severity of the disease or have a bearing on deaths, the timesofindia.com Dec 23 cited VK Paul, member-health, Niti Aayog (National Institution for Transforming India, a policy think tank of the Gov’t of India), as saying Dec 22.

“We have not detected this mutation. Our own deep assessment is that we do not need to panic. We have to be more vigilant but that is also because we still are fighting the pandemic,” Paul has said, emphasising the need to continue Covid-appropriate behaviour and avoid crowds during Christmas and New Year.

The new variant is estimated by the European Centre for Disease Control to be more transmissible and affecting the younger population.

Meanwhile in India, fresh Covid-19 cases have increased by 22% over the past 24 hours. The daily figures have been declining in recent days with occasional increases and with 22% being a higher level increase.

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The latest data from India’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare show that there were 23,950 new cases and 333 new deaths in the country in the past 24 hours as of Dec 23 at 8AM, taking their cumulative totals to 10,099,066 cases and 146,444 deaths.

A total of 9,663,382, or 95.69%, had recovered while the number of active cases was 289,240, or 2.86% of the total. The case fatality rate was 1.45%. These percentage figures were mostly improvements over the previous day’s figures.

The latest daily number of new cases, at 23,950, was less than the daily number of those who had recovered, at 26,895, leading to a decline in the number of active cases by 3,278.

The active caseload remained below 3 lakh for the second consecutive day.

India is currently the country with the world’s second highest number of Covid-19 cases and the third highest number of deaths.

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The cumulative total of Covid-19 cases among Tibetans in India, Nepal and Bhutan had remained unchanged at 1,426 (↑0), of whom 133 were active, 1,277 had recovered and 36 (↑0) had died, according to the latest tally of the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) as of Dec 23.

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Across the world the number of Covid-19 cases totaled 78,077,208 and the deaths 1,718,371, according to the tally of Johns Hopkins University as of 2:52 PM on Dec 23, 2020.

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