A Science and Technology Blog
In an email, epidemiologist Dr. Giridhara Babu from Bengaluru’s Public Health Foundation of India explains why the Zero COVID strategy is impractical and difficult to sustain and tells what could…
The increase in daily cases has been very steep — from over 12,200 cases on March 1 to over 1,26,000 on April 7. The doubling time has reduced from 504…
The rate of increase in cases in India during March has been faster than at any other time during the pandemic, which is also reflected in the modelling studies by…
No spike in Kerala Contrary to claims made by the Health Ministry about a spike in Kerala, the daily fresh cases have in fact been slowly declining in the State…
The number of daily fresh coronavirus cases has been steadily dropping from a peak of nearly 98,000 cases on September 16 to below 25,000 daily cases in the last few days with no spike seen nationally. The cases have been reducing despite the festival season, winter, large gatherings and not so good adherence to non-pharmaceutical interventions. However, the cumulative test positivity rate nationally is 6.1% as on December 23, which suggests we aren’t near the end of the first wave immediately.
While in-flight transmission of novel coronavirus among passengers is considered to be low, three studies have found instances where coronavirus transmission had probably taken place in-flight. The spread has probably become possible as mask wearing was not compulsory early in the pandemic. But thermal imaging, which has been in place since the beginning, has been found wanting.
On September 18, CDC revised its guidelines to acknowledge that the “main way” the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) spreads is through aerosols. It also for the first time mentions that virus can spread through breathing, stay suspended in air and travel to distances beyond six feet.
Universal mask wearing decreases the chance of infection and, if infected, decreases the amount of virus particles (inoculum) a mask-wearer is exposed to thus causing only asymptomatic infection or mild COVID-19 disease.
