File: A health worker adjusts the oxygen mask of a patient at a Covid-19 facility in India’s Mumbai city on 6 May, 2021
(AP)
As many as 14 people who recovered from Covid in a Delhi hospital have since been diagnosed with multiple liver abscesses, officials said.
One of the patients died due to this post-Covid complication and at least eight of the 14 had received steroids while they were being treated for the virus, Sir Ganga Ram Hospital said.
Doctors also said that poor nutrition and the use of steroids are some of the possible reasons behind the formation of the pus in the patients’ liver, according to news agency PTI.
Meanwhile, Myanmar’s military has been accused of arresting several doctors who were treating Covid-19 patients over their support for the anti-junta protests.
Doctors and media reports said at least nine doctors, who volunteered to provide tele-medicine services, have been detained by the military, according to Reuters. This comes even as Myanmar registered 6,000 new infections on Thursday.
India’s top doctor bats for reopening of schools in a staggered way
Director of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Dr Randeep Guleria, has said that the Indian government should consider reopening schools in a staggered way.
He told India Today in an interview that the reopening can be planned for places which have a positivity rate of below 5 per cent.
Most states closed schools last year when India went into its first lockdown to stem the spread of Covid-19, and are yet to allow them to reopen.
Dr Guleria said that a lot of the children in India have developed natural immunity because they have been exposed to the virus.
Akshita Jain23 July 2021 07:16
More states refute Indian government’s claim of no deaths due to oxygen shortage
After the national capital Delhi, the state of Rajasthan has also contended the central government’s claim in Parliament that no death due to lack of oxygen has been specifically reported by the states or Union Territories during the second wave of the pandemic in India.
Rajasthan has now said that the central government did not seek information on Covid patients who died because of a shortage of oxygen before making the claim.
Health minister Raghu Sharma told The Times of India that if the Centre had asked, the state government would have informed that majority of the Covid casualties happened due to oxygen crisis.
This comes after the Delhi government said that it had no data about deaths due to the lack of oxygen because the Centre did not let it form a committee to look into claims of such deaths.
Akshita Jain23 July 2021 06:40
New Zealand suspends travel bubble with Australia
New Zealand has suspended its travel bubble with Australia for at least eight weeks due to a surge in Covid-19 infections in Australia.
The country has been battling an increase in the number of cases driven by the Delta variant of Covid-19, which was first detected in India. It has imposed restrictions to curb the spread of the virus, putting half the country’s population in lockdown.
Prime minister Jacinda Ardern said the “Delta variant has materially changed the risk profile” and shutting down the quarantine-free travel bubble is the right decision to keep New Zealanders safe.
Akshita Jain23 July 2021 06:16
3 million miss second dose of vaccine in Indian state
Around 3 million people in the Indian state of Rajasthan have already completed the mandatory wait period between two doses of Covid-19 vaccine, but they are yet to receive their second dose due to a shortage, according to reports.
While 894,565 people are waiting for a dose of India’s homegrown vaccine ‘Covaxin’, over 2 million people are yet to get their second dose of Covidshield — the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine locally made by Serum Institute of India — according to The Indian Express.
State officials have said they have run out of vaccine doses and it’s not yet clear when the next batch will arrive.
Akshita Jain23 July 2021 05:54
Good morning, and welcome to The Independent’s coverage of the coronavirus pandemic for Friday 23 July, 2021.
Akshita Jain23 July 2021 05:18
