Health

WASHINGTON: Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi planned to visit New York and Washington next week, but the Omicron virus forced him to postpone the trip, official sources in the US capital told Dawn. Sources in New York said that the virus has also affected President UN General Assembly (UNGA) Abdulla Shahid and senior members of the UN Secretary General’s staff, including …

NEW DELHI: Election rallies were cancelled in India’s heartland on Thursday as authorities fret over a sudden Covid surge, driven by the Omicron variant, which has seen confirmed infections nearly triple in two days. Teeming crowds have thronged campaign events for next month’s poll in Uttar Pradesh — the country’s most populous state with over 200 million people and a …

NEW DELHI: An 84-year-old man in India claims to have taken 11 Covid vaccine doses saying it has made him healthier, Times of India reported on Thursday. It said Brahmdeo Mandal, a resident of Orai village in Bihar, believes he has got rid of several ailments after taking the multiple jabs. The matter came to light on Tuesday when Brahmdeo visited another vaccination …

LONDON: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Thursday hit out at anti-vaccine campaigners’ “mumbo jumbo” and “nonsense” in his toughest attack yet on those opposed to Covid-19 jabs. “I want to say to the anti-vax campaigners, the people who are putting this mumbo jumbo on social media: they are completely wrong,” Johnson told journalists. “You haven’t heard me say that …

ISLAMABAD: The positivity rate of the twin cities has more than doubled in the last four days as fresh cases of the new Covid-19 variant continue to spread, and the administrations of both cities are considering smart lockdowns to curb the transmission of the virus. According to the Islamabad District Health Officer (DHO) Zaeem Zia – where 36 more people …

Pfizer Inc expects the latest results from a clinical trial for kids under the age of 5 of the COVID-19 vaccine it developed with Germany’s BioNTech SE by April, a top company scientist said on Wednesday. “The study has been amended to give a third dose to everybody who’s less than five at least eight weeks after their last vaccination,” …

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has reported 1,085 COVID-19 cases in a single day, its highest tally in two months, as authorities warned of a fifth wave of infections and made preparations to try to contain the fast-spreading Omicron variant. According to the latest figures shared by the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC), a total of 46,585 samples were tested during this …

KARACHI: In an alarming trend, the positivity ratio of COVID-19 cases in Karachi has reached beyond nine percent, the provincial health department said on Thursday amid concerns over rising cases of Omicron variant. According to the Sindh health department, the positivity ratio has reached 9.23 percent, a day after it was reported at 8.91 percent, showing an alarming increase of …

PARIS: President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday faced anger from opponents and chaos in parliament after warning French people not yet vaccinated against Covid-19 that they would be squeezed out of key aspects of life. Macron, who has not yet formally declared his candidacy for re-election in April, came under fire from challengers already in the race, accusing him of overstepping …

Planning Minister Asad Umar on Thursday said the option of lockdown was not being considered presently despite the Omicron-driven fifth wave of the coronavirus causing daily infections to go past the 1,000 mark for the first time in nearly three months. “At this time there is no plan of [imposing] lockdowns. We are looking at [Covid] numbers very closely as …