Coronavirus March 29 Latest Updates: The world is seeing a new wave of Covid-19 infections with a sharp surge in daily cases in several countries. The only relief is that the new round of infections is not seeing high mortality rate as compared to Delta wave. While India remains in the green zone so far, China and Europe are battling the Covid spike. Here are the latest coronavirus updates that you need to know today:
Scientists and researchers around the globe have confirmed that the stealth variant of Omicron is now the dominating coronavirus strain. A Reuters report citing WHO data says that the BA.2 variant of Omicron accounts for 86 per cent of the sequenced cases around the globe.
Much more transmissible than other Omicron siblings, the BA.2 variant, however, doesn’t cause severe illness, research so far suggests. But the more worrying aspect is that vaccines are not effective on this strain of novel coronavirus.
BA.2 has been responsible for latest surge in cases in China and Europe. It is known as ‘stealth Omicron’ because it is harder to detect it.
University of Edinburgh’s epidemiologist Mark Woolhouse says that the new BA.2 wave of infections highlights that the pandemic is still a challenge for public healthcare infrastructure. It also shows that the virus is still evolving and has the potential to cause severe harm to the human population.
Talking about the cases in Europe, Germany saw a massive spike today. The daily update by the Robert Koch Institute says that Germany recorded 2,37,352 new coronavirus cases and 307 Covid deaths in the last 24 hours.
Meanwhile, India saw yet another decline in the daily Covid-19 cases today. The health ministry bulletin released today said that the country recorded 1,259 new coronavirus infections in the last 24 hours. There was a minor increase in the number of Covid deaths in comparison with Monday. Against 31 Covid deaths, Tuesday data showed 35 corona fatalities. Shanghai, China’s most populous city and the financial hub, today further tightened the phase-1 of the Covid lockdown. As new cases breached the 4,000-mark, Shanghai officials have asked some locals to stay indoors.
Kerala on Tuesday reported 424 new COVID-19 cases, taking its overall tally of Coronavirus infections to 65,31,860. According to an official press release, the state also reported 22 deaths which raised the total fatalities in Kerala to 67,844. Of the deaths, six occurred in the last few days but were not recorded due to late receipt of documents and 16 were designated as COVID-19 deaths after receiving appeals based on the new guidelines of the Centre and the directions of the Supreme Court, the release said.