ndia, in the last 24 hours, recorded 41,806 new Covid-19 cases, a slight increase from Tuesday’s 38,792. The country also witnessed 581 Covid-related deaths on Wednesday. There are currently 4,32,041 active cases across India. Kerala continues to be the top contributor, reporting 15,637 new cases — the highest in more than a month. The AY.1 and AY.2 sub-lineages of the highly contagious Delta variant of the novel coronavirus are unlikely to be more transmissible than Delta itself, said the consortium of government panels involved in genome sequencing of coronavirus.

In a recent bulletin, the Indian Sars-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium (INSACOG) said that the cases of Delta sub-lineages AY.1 and AY.2 are declining globally, with near-zero cases in the last week of June in the UK and the US where they were most frequently detected. “It is likely that neither AY.1 nor AY.2 is more transmissible than Delta,” the INSACOG said, adding there is no indication of a rising trend in the four clusters of Ratnagiri and Jalgaon in Maharashtra, Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh and Chennai in Tamil Nadu.

In view of the coronavirus pandemic, the Government of Canada suspended all direct flights from India until July 21. However, passengers from India who wish to visit the country now have the option of taking a connecting flight as long as they obtain a negative Covid-19 certificate from a third country before continuing their journey to Canada, according to the government’s latest guidelines. Canada will not be accepting Covid-19 molecular test reports from India, the country’s official travel advisory noted. Instead, passengers will have to produce test results from the last point of departure before their arrival in Canada.

News Source : CNBC