Amsterdam: The omicron variant was already in the Netherlands when South Africa alerted the World Health Organization about it last week, Dutch health authorities said Tuesday, adding to fear and confusion over the new version of the coronavirus in a weary world hoping it had left the worst of the pandemic behind. The Netherlands’ RIVM […]
BEIJING: China on Tuesday took exception to a Pentagon report to enhance US bases in Guam and Australia to meet the growing challenges posed by Beijing, saying it fully exposes Washington’s efforts to militarise the Indo-Pacific to encircle and contain it. A senior US defence official on Monday said that the Pentagon will focus on […]
Taipei: Taiwan said 27 Chinese aircraft entered its air defence buffer zone on Sunday, the latest in a long series of incursions as part of Beijing’s pressure on the self-ruled island. The Defence Ministry said Taiwan scrambled combat aircraft to “warn” the Chinese planes to leave. It also deployed missile systems to monitor them. Sunday’s […]
Johannesburg: South Africa’s top health federation on Sunday slammed the 18 nations which have imposed travel bans on the country on fears of the new potentially highly-transmissible variant of COVID-19, Omicron, saying the world must avoid such “knee-jerk reaction” if it wants “transparency” in the sharing of critical medical data. The new COVID-19 variant B.1.1.529, […]
London: Face coverings will become a compulsory requirement in shops and public transport in England from Tuesday, the UK government said on Sunday as part of the tighter COVID-19 curbs being enforced in response to two cases of the new Omicron variant detected in the country. Health Secretary Sajid Javid said the requirement of compulsory […]
TEHRAN: Riot police were deployed Saturday after a number of arrests in the Iranian city of Isfahan, witnesses and state media said, a day after violent protests over the drying up of a lifeblood river. Security forces fired tear gas during clashes Friday with stone-throwers at the protest by around 500 people in the bed […]
America’s top infectious disease expert Dr Anthony Fauci has said that the new COVID-19 Omicron variant is in “fluid motion” in South Africa and the US scientists are in “very active” communication with their colleagues in that country to test the strain, get facts and find out whether or not it evades the antibodies. The […]
A new study has shown that the airborne transmission of COVID-19 is highly random and suggests that social distancing alone is not effective in controlling its spread, reiterating the importance of vaccination and face masks. A team of engineers from the University of Cambridge used computer modelling to quantify how droplets spread when people cough. […]
WASHINGTON: The United States has not made a determination yet on any potential Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) waiver to India with regard to its purchase of S-400 missile defense system from Russia, the Biden Administration said Tuesday. The State Department comments come a week after India started receiving the supplies of S-400 […]
Immune responses to other human coronaviruses, which mostly only cause harmless colds, can provide some protection against SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19), according to new research published in the journal Nature Communications’. It is known that infections with the novel coronavirus, which causes COVID-19, and vaccination lead to strong antibody responses against SARS-CoV-2. This week, researchers at the […]