China's daily Covid cases hit two-year high; reports nearly 2,000 new infections: NHC
Beijing, Mar 13: Coronavirus cases in China has hit two-year high as health officials have reported about 2,000 new infections in different parts of the country, including 20 in Beijing.
The Chinese mainland on Saturday reported 1,807 locally transmitted COVID-19 cases and 131 imported cases, China's National Health Commission said on Sunday.
Of the new local infections, 1,412 were reported in Jilin province, where China last Friday ordered a lockdown of the nine million residents of the provincial capital Changchun amid a new spike in COVID-19 cases in the area attributed to the highly contagious omicron variant.
Besides Changchun the latest lockdowns, also include Yucheng with 500,000 people in Shandong province.
The Commission reported that besides Jilin, 175 cases were reported in Shandong, 62 in Guangdong, 39 in Shaanxi, 33 in Hebei, 23 in Jiangsu, and 17 in Tianjin.
Beijing also reported 20 cases.
Meanwhile, the situation continue to deteriorate in Hong Kong where officials confirmed 27,647 new Covid-19 cases, including 11,858 positive, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reported on Sunday.
The former British colony also reported COVID-related 87 deaths taking the overall toll to 3,729, the report said.
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K'taka HC issues notice to BBMP as petitioner questions propriety of microchipping stray dogs
Bengaluru: The Karnataka High Court has issued notice to the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) regarding its Request for Proposal (RFP) for the vaccination of stray dogs and implanting microchips inside the bodies of the animals.
The notice was issued by the HC bench consisting of Justices Sunil Dutt Yadav and Venkatesh Naik T, after animal caregiver Priyadarshini S filed a public interest litigation (PIL) questioning the BBMP's Request for Proposal.
The petitioner has complained that the BBMP adopted a combined plan for vaccination of stray dogs using microchips that can be scanned. She has also said that, going by the context of the Animal Birth Control (ABC) rules, the primary mandate of the city corporation is to sterilize or vaccinate the dogs in order to control their population. The locals, however, are well aware that the BBMP is still struggling to set up legally mandated ABC surgical centres at all zones of the city.
The court has also been told that specific approval has not been obtained from the Animal Welfare Board of India (AWBI) regarding the microchipping project on stray dogs, and that an invasive procedure at a large scale as planned by the BBMP is not be found anywhere else in the world. The dogs of Bengaluru cannot be treated as trial samples for an experimental combination of vaccination and microchipping, unless a pilot study has been conducted earlier under controlled conditions.
The petitioner objected to the BBMP desiring to have one RFP for various specialized vaccination procedures including microchipping, infrastructure and monitoring, pointing out that the procedures needed focused implementation plans. It would not be possible for the BBMP to get the same set of people to efficiently undertake all these tasks, without prior discussion and planning with AWBI-identified NGOs, she added.
The court was asked to quash and set aside the tender notification and also direct the respondents to follow the rules set by the ABC while issuing further tender notifications, with a declaration that the respondents are strictly adhering to the ABC rules.
