Covid Report Card: Once Top on India's Virus Tally, Where These States Stand Now. Is Work From Home About to End?

India is registering low Covid infections with active cases plummeting to a record low at 25,913 comprising 0.06 percent of the total infections so far. The country recorded 1,581 fresh cases while 33 fresh fatalities were recorded.

India’s low Covid tally comes as cases are at record high in China, South Korea and Eastern Europe. More than 4,000 new infections were reported across China on Sunday – with two-thirds in Jilin province, which borders Russia and North Korea. The country has locked down an industrial city of nine million people overnight as the nation’s “zero-Covid” strategy is confronted by an Omicron wave.

Meanwhile, South Korea’s daily Covid-19 infections fell below 3 lakh for the first time in 10 days, prompting the authorities to speculate that the worst may be over.

Here are some of the recent Covid-19 developments from the country

Zero Covid Hospital Admissions

Mumbai reported 28 new cases and zero fresh fatalities on Monday, leaving the city with an active tally of less than 300. For the first time in two years, Mumbai did not record a single hospitalisation since the beginning of the pandemic.

Meanwhile, Maharashtra has reported zero Covid fatalities for the first time this month. The state reported 99 new cases, taking overall count to 78 lakh.

Cases Falling

States which reported the highest caseloads in the country have seen a significant decline in Covid cases. While Maharashtra reported 99 cases, Delhi registered 108 fresh cases, Kerala 495 and Karnataka 109.

Booster For All

The government is considering a Covid vaccine booster for all those above 18 years after surge in several parts of the world, sources said on Monday. Currently, healthcare and frontline workers and those above 60 years are being administered precaution doses.

All people above 60 years have become eligible for the precaution dose of Covid vaccine after the Union Health Ministry removed the co-morbidity clause recently. The prioritisation and sequencing of the dose is based on the completion of nine months, or 39 weeks, from the date of administration of the second dose.

Work from Home to End?

With a slump in covid cases across the country, from big tech companies to startups, everybody is slowly shifting from the Work from home culture. Many companies including Wipro, Cognizant and others have started calling back some of their employees to office while others like Infosys have switched to a hybrid method.

Infosys CEO Narayana Murthy has said that work from home system does not work in a country like India and will weaker the institutional culture. “I am not a great fan of work from home at all. “When people work from home, that institutional culture will slowly become weaker and weaker,” Murthy told Deccan Herald.

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