As WHO warns 'Covid-19 nowhere near over', India begins FREE booster shots for adults for next 75 days

India has begun giving free Covid-19 booster doses to eligible adults for next 75 days. It's been more than two years since Covid-19 brought the world to its knees. While life, as we knew it kind of, resumed across the world, Covid-19 - despite many predictions - is far from over. And recently, the World Health Organization said that "Covid-19 is still around. Globally, the number of weekly cases has increased for the third consecutive week, after a decline since March 2022. On 20-26 June, over 4.1 million new cases were reported, an 18% increase compared to the previous week." As WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus pointed out, "New waves of the virus demonstrate again that the Covid-19 is nowhere near over."  

Ghebreyesus said, "Surveillance has reduced significantly – including testing and sequencing – making it increasingly difficult to assess the impact of variants on transmission, disease characteristics, and the effectiveness of counter-measures." He added, "The Emergency Committee on Covid-19 met on Friday last week and concluded that the virus remains a Public Health Emergency of International Concern."

In India, a recent report pointed out that only 1% of the eligible population between 18-59 years have taken precautionary doses. To encourage people to get booster shots,  Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya said that starting today, "all eligible populations (18+) can get a free precaution dose for the next 75 days," to mark the 'Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav'. 

India logged a single-day rise of 20,038 new coronavirus infections today in the last 24 hours, pushing the tally of cases to 4,37,10,027, while the count of active cases of the disease has increased to 1,39,073, according to Union Health Ministry data updated on Friday.
The death toll due to the disease has climbed to 5,25,604 with 47 new fatalities being reported, the data updated at 8 am showed.

Sub-variants of Omicron, like BA.4 and BA.5, continue to drive waves of cases, hospitalisation and death around the world. WHO Chief Scientist Soumya Swaminathan said in a video posted on Twitter that there has been an emergence of a sub-variant that is being called the BA.2.75, first reported from India and then from about 10 other countries. According to Swaminathan, there are still limited sequences available of the sub-variant to analyse, but this sub-variant seems to have a few mutations on the receptor-binding domain of the spike protein.