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Delta variant now reported in 135 countries, global coronavirus cases could exceed 200 million by next week: WHO

The global number of new cases has been increasing for more than a month, with over 4 million cases reported in the past week – July 26 to August 1, the update said.

“This increasing trend is largely attributed to substantial increases in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Western Pacific Regions which reported 37 percent and 33 percent increases respectively as compared to the previous week, while the South-East Asia Region reported a 9 percent increase,” it said.

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Study finds air pollution associated with higher risk of dementia

“We found that an increase of 1 microgram per cubic meter of exposure corresponded to a 16 per cent greater hazard of all-cause dementia. There was a similar association for Alzheimer’s-type dementia,” said lead author Rachel Shaffer, who conducted the research as a doctoral student in the UW Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences.

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COVID-19 herd immunity: It’s not going to happen, so what next?

The evolution of the virus has been so rapid that the Delta variant, which is currently dominating the world, is at least twice as transmissible as the ancestral virus that was circulating.

What this means is that herd immunity is no longer a discussion the world should be having. We should start to avoid using that term in the context of SARS-CoV-2, because it’s not going to materialise – or is unlikely to materialise – during our lifetimes.

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Full functional autonomy for PSU general insurers not privatisation: Unions

On Friday, Sitharaman also said the private general insurers have greater penetration and raised more money from the market and therefore give a better premium for public and innovative covers. On the other hand, the government insurers are not able to perform as they are short of resources.

Responding to that Jha said: “In 2019-20 the four PSU general insurers issued about 7.33 crore policies. The numbers of last fiscal will be similar. One should compare this with the number of policies issued by the private players to calculate insurance penetration.”
Bengal finance minister Amit Mitra questioned the “anti-people policy” of privatising public sector insurance companies LIC and United India Insurance Company, urged her to stop the privatisation attempt that will jeopardise investments of crores of people.

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India reports 40,134 new COVID cases and 422 deaths

Fresh Covid-19 cases in India registered a week-on-week rise for the first time in 12 weeks since the peak of the second wave in early May, indicating an early sign of another pandemic spike in the country, said experts.

Currently, the surge is mainly restricted to Kerala and, to a much lesser degree, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.Cumulatively, 47,22,23,639 vaccine doses have been administered through 55,99,690 sessions, as per the provisional report till 7 am today. 17,06,598 vaccine doses were administered in the last 24 hours.

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