Tag: covid-19

Philippines Clears Russia’s Sputnik V Vaccine amid Record Daily Rise in New Covid-19 Infections

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New coronavirus infections in the Philippines hit a record high on Friday, health officials said, as pandemic restrictions were tightened in the capital to combat the resurgence in cases. Museums, game arcades and driving schools have been ordered to shut, while church and restaurant capacity has been reduced to 30 percent as authorities struggle to contain the fast-spreading virus.

The temporary measures come as the number of daily new infections in the country hit 7,103 — the highest since the start of the crisis — taking its caseload to more than 648,000, with most of the active cases in the capital.

Experts have warned the figure could reach 11,000 a day by the end of the month, while the Covid-19 task force has called for available vaccines to be deployed to virus hot spots.

On Friday, the Philippines’ drug regulator approved Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine for emergency use — the fourth jab to get the green light. Moscow registered the vaccine in August before large-scale clinical trials, but leading medical journal The Lancet has since said it is safe and over 90 percent effective.

The Philippines has received more than a million doses of vaccines developed by China’s Sinovac and British-Swedish drug maker AstraZeneca this month. The government hopes to acquire enough vaccines to inoculate 70 million people by the end of this year.

Targeted lockdowns, strict night-time curfews, a stay-at-home order for all children and a ban on foreigners entering the country have been introduced in the past fortnight.

There are growing fears that the entire capital, where 12 million people were forced into a crippling monthslong lockdown a year ago, could be shut down again as hospital beds fill up.

“It’s alarming because there are areas in Metro Manila — Manila, Quezon City, Taguig and Makati — which are already in the high-risk category of more than 70 percent (hospital bed occupancy). Some are at 83 percent,” Health Undersecretary Leopoldo Vega told reporters.

He said of the roughly 7,000 hospital beds allocated for Covid-19 patients in the capital, 54 percent were now occupied. The resurgence of the virus has been blamed on poor compliance with health protocols and more contagious strains.

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Germany Mulls Lockdown Extension amid ‘Exponential’ Coronavirus Infection Spread

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Coronavirus cases in Germany are rising at a “very clearly exponential rate”, a top public health institute said Friday, as the EU’s biggest country debated tightening a shutdown. The vice president of the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases, Lars Schaade, told reporters that highly contagious virus variants were getting the upper hand, wiping out progress seen last month in containing the pandemic.

“It is very possible that we will have a similar situation over Easter to the one we had before Christmas, with very high case numbers, many severe cases and deaths, and hospitals that are overwhelmed”. The RKI on Friday reported 17,482 new infections in the previous 24 hours and 226 deaths in Germany, with the seven-day incidence rate soaring to 96 per 100,000 people despite a months-long shutdown of large swathes of public life.

German leaders agreed earlier this month to impose new restrictions in regions where the seven-day incidence rate surpassed 100. The country’s second city of Hamburg said it would pull the “emergency brake” from Saturday after exceeding the 100-mark three days in a row. Brandenburg, the state surrounding Berlin, also crossed the benchmark on Friday.

“We are in the third wave of the pandemic, the numbers are rising, the percentage of virus mutations is high,” Health Minister Jens Spahn told the news conference. Spahn, who this week faced growing calls to resign amid frustration with the government’s pandemic management, called on Germans to refrain from spring break travel to help curb infections.

The grim news came as Germany resumed administering AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 jabs after the European regulator EMA assessed it was “safe and effective” to use.

‘Short, sharp’ restrictions

Amid a widely criticised sluggish vaccination campaign, Germany decided on Monday, along with most EU governments, to suspend use of the vaccine for the EMA to examine a handful of cases of cerebral vein thrombosis that emerged. Doctors will now have to inform patients about the possible blood clotting risk before giving them the jabs.

Critics had complained that the decision to halt use of AstraZeneca’s vaccine over the last days only served to fuel mistrust over the jabs and further delay Germany’s inoculation programme. By Thursday, only 3.8 percent of the German population was reported fully immunised.

Spahn said the resumption of the AstraZeneca vaccinations combined with expected new arrivals of jabs from other manufacturers in April should speed up the German campaign.

But he admitted that “an honest analysis of the situation shows that there aren’t enough vaccines in Europe to stop the third wave with vaccination alone”. He said it would take several weeks before even those in the highest risk groups were fully inoculated and warned that the country should brace for an extension of current restrictions.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel will meet with the country’s 16 state leaders on Monday to set new shutdown rules based on the latest pandemic developments.

Karl Lauterbach, a public health expert from the Social Democrats, junior partners in the government, said there was for now no alternative to keeping restaurants, most shops and entertainment venues closed. “You can look at it any way you want, we have to go back to lockdown,” he said, calling for “short, sharp” restrictions. “The sooner we react, the shorter the lockdown will need to be.”

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COVID-19 | Stelis Biopharma to make 200 million doses of Russian Sputnik V vaccine

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The Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), the country’s sovereign wealth fund, and Stelis Biopharma, the biopharmaceutical division of Bengaluru-based Strides Pharma, have entered into a partnership to produce and supply a minimum of 200 million doses (enough to vaccinate 100 million people) of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine against coronavirus.

The agreement between RDIF and Stelis Biopharma was reached under the aegis of Enso Healthcare LLP (part of Enso Group), RDIF’s coordination partner for sourcing Sputnik V vaccine in India, as per a joint statement.

According to the statement, the parties intend to commence supplies of the vaccine from the third quarter of calendar 2021. Stelis will also continue to work with the RDIF to provide additional supply volumes beyond the initial agreement.

Arun Kumar, Founder of Strides Group said, “We are delighted to partner with RDIF to make a substantial contribution towards providing global supply of the Sputnik V vaccine which is one of the most efficacious approved vaccines commercially available.”

“The Russian vaccine with the efficacy of 91.6% is one of the best vaccines against coronavirus in the world. The significant vaccine volumes which will be produced jointly with Stelis will help to widen access to the vaccine on a global scale,” said Kirill Dmitriev, CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund.

Sputnik V, the world’s first registered vaccine against the novel coronavirus infection, is now approved for use in over 50 countries. Sputnik V is a two-dose vaccine that uses two different human adenoviral vectors in the course of vaccination.

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COVID-19 surge continues: Maharashtra, Kerala and Punjab account for 76.48% of country’s total active cases

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Sixteen States/Union Territories have not reported any COVID-19 deaths in the last 24 hours.

Three States — Maharashtra, Kerala and Punjab account for 76.48% of India’s total active cases currently with the country on Friday reporting 39,726 new COVID-19 cases, 20,654 recoveries and 154 deaths in the last 24 hours, as per data released by the Health Ministry.

“Some states in the country are reporting a surge in the daily new COVID-19 cases. Maharashtra, Punjab, Karnataka, Gujarat and Chhattisgarh together account 80.63% of the daily new cases,’’ said the release.

It added that Maharashtra continued to report the highest daily new cases at 25,833 (65% of the daily cases). It is followed by Punjab with 2,369 while Kerala reported 1,899 new cases. India’s total active caseload stands at 2.71 lakh (2,71,282) on Friday.

The release added that the country’s cumulative recoveries stand at 1,10,83,679 on Friday with a national recovery rate of 96.56%.

Sixteen States/Union Territories have not reported any COVID-19 deaths in the last 24 hours. These include — Andhra Pradesh, Chandigarh, Odisha, Uttarakhand, Jharkhand, Lakshadweep, Sikkim, Meghalaya and Arunachal Pradesh.

IMA appeal

Meanwhile, the India Medical Association (IMA) in a release issued on Friday said that it was painful to note that despite adequate health care, infrastructure encasement, public awareness and stringent control measures for the mitigation of Coronavirus pandemic in India, there was a continuous spike in the cases streaking across the country forecasting the beginning of the second wave.

“We urge everyone to come forward with a more dedicated test, trace and carry on appropriate protocol for treating without falling prey to unscientific selfish-centered promotion of certain drugs and procedures,’’ noted the release.

Association national president J. A. Jayalal said: “In this context, we have raised questions on the usage of certain tablets (Coronil) as a medicine for the Corona infection. When questions were sent to Central Drug Standard Control Organisation through RTI it replied that no certificate or permission for the use of Coronil for treatment of COVID-19 is given by them.’’

He added that while the IMA acknowledged and respected the valuable contribution of pure Ayurveda drugs, “using it as an only curative drug for infected people will be a dangerous one. In the pandemic, we need to be extra cautious as any false hope will enhance the spread of the disease. Everyone should take the COVID-19 vaccination and adopt the principles of COVID-19 appropriate behaviours like physical distancing, hand hygiene, respiratory hygiene and appropriate masking to protect the people from spread of infection,’’ he said.

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Using AI to fight COVID-19 may harm disadvantaged groups, experts say

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The university’s researchers also highlighted discrimination in AI technology as they pick symptom profiles from medical records, reflecting and exacerbating biases against minorities

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Companies worldwide have devised methods in the past year to harness the power of big data and machine learning (ML) in medicine. A model developed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) uses AI to detect asymptomatic COVID-19 patients through coughs recorded on their smartphones. In South Korea, a company used cloud computing to scan chest X-rays to monitor infected patients.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and ML have been extensively deployed during the pandemic, and their use ranged from data extraction to vaccine distribution. But experts from the University of Cambridge raise questions on ethical use of AI as they see the technology to have a tendency to harm minorities and those from lower socio-economic status.

“Relaxing ethical requirements in a crisis could have unintended harmful consequences that last well beyond the life of the pandemic,” said Stephen Cave, Director of Cambridge’s Center for the Future of Intelligence (CFI).

Also Read | Competition between prediction algorithms is bad for customers, study finds

Making clinical choices like predicting deterioration rates of patients who may need ventilation can be flawed as the AI model uses biased data. These trained datasets and algorithms are inevitably skewed against groups that access health services infrequently, including minority ethnic communities and those belonging to lower social status, Cambridge team warned.

Another issue is in the way algorithms are used to allocate vaccines locally, nationally and globally. Last December, Stanford Medical Centre’s vaccination plan algorithm left out several young front-line workers.

“In many cases, AI plays a central role in determining who is best placed to survive the pandemic. In a health crisis of this magnitude, the stakes for fairness and equity are extremely high,” said Alexa Hagerty, research associate at University of Cambridge.

Also Read | How bias crept into AI-powered technologies

The university’s researchers also highlighted discrimination in AI technology as they pick symptom profiles from medical records, reflecting and exacerbating biases against minorities.

The use of contact-tracing apps has also been criticised by several experts around the world, stating that it excludes those who don’t have access to the internet and those who lack digital skills, among other user privacy issues.

In India, biometric identity programmes can be linked to vaccination distribution, raising concerns for data privacy and security. Other vaccine allocation algorithms, including some used by the COVAX alliance, are driven by privately owned AI. These private algorithms are like ‘black box’, Hagerty noted.

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One new Covid-19 case in Andamans | India News – Times of India

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PORT BLAIR: One more person tested positive for Covid-19 in Andaman and Nicobar Islands, pushing the tally in the union territory to 5,036, a health department official said on Friday.
Two more persons recuperated from the disease in the last 24 hours, taking the total number of Covid-19 recoveries to 4,969, the official said.
The archipelago now has five active Covid-19 cases and all the five patients are in South Andaman district, he said.
The Covid-19 death toll remained at 62 as no new fatality due to the infection was reported in the last 24 hours.
The union territory administration has so far tested 2,99,048 samples for Covid-19 and the test positivity rate is 1.68 per cent, he said.
Altogether, 12,303 health care and frontline workers have been inoculated in the union territory till Thursday, and 1,865 people above 45 years of age have received the vaccine shots, the official said.
A total of 4,169 health care workers have also received the second dose of the vaccine.

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Britain Says Delay in Serum Institute Vaccines Contributing to Supply Squeeze

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Britain is facing a squeeze on supply of COVID-19 vaccines next month in part due to a delay in a shipment from India’s Serum Institute that is making AstraZeneca’s shot, health minister Matt Hancock said on Thursday.

British health officials warned on Wednesday that the world’s fastest big economy roll-out of the vaccine would face a significant reduction in supplies from March 29, without initially specifying where the problems were.

“We have a delay in a scheduled arrival from the Serum Institute of India,” Hancock told lawmakers.

Britain is rolling out vaccines made by Pfizer and AstraZeneca, with 10 million doses of the 100 million ordered from AstraZeneca coming from the Serum Institute.

A spokesman for the Serum Institute said it had delivered 5 million doses to the UK a few weeks ago.

“And we will try to supply more later, based on the current situation and requirement for the Government immunisation programme in India,” he said.

Pfizer Inc and AstraZeneca Plc said their delivery schedules had not been impacted.

Hancock added that, separately, a batch of 1.7 million vaccine doses had been delayed as it had to be retested, without specifying the manufacturer.

“Events like this are to be expected in the manual in a manufacturing endeavour of this complexity,” Hancock said.

Hancock denied rumours that the delays would see no adults receive a first dose of the vaccine in April, but said it was important to make sure there was enough vaccine to give people a second dose within 12 weeks of their first.

He also said that Britain was on target to offer everyone over 50 a vaccine by mid-April, and a shot to all adults by the end of July.

Earlier, housing minister Robert Jenrick said that supplies would pick up again in May.

Britain is on track to have given a first shot to half of all adults in the next few days, making it one of the fastest countries to roll out a vaccine.

So far 25.27 million people in the United Kingdom have had a vaccine, around 48% of adults.

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Covid Pandemic Pushes 3.2 Cr Indians Below the Middle Class, Those Earning Less Than Rs 150 up by 7.5 Cr

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Undoing years of economic gain, financial woes brought by a single year of the coronavirus pandemic pushed about 3.2 crore Indians out of the middle class, according to the US-based Pew Research Centre.

A year into the pandemic, the numbers of those in the middle class has shrunk to 6.6 crore, down a third from a pre-pandemic estimate of 9.9 crore, the report added.

“India is estimated to have seen a greater decrease in the middle class and a much sharper rise in poverty than China in the COVID-19 downturn,” the Pew Research Centre said, citing the World Bank’s forecasts of economic growth.

Nearly 5.7 crore people had joined the middle income group between 2011 and 2019, it added.

In January last year, the World Bank forecast almost the same level of economic growth for India and China, at 5.8 per cent and 5.9 per cent respectively, in 2020.

But nearly a year into the pandemic, the World Bank revised its forecast this January, to a contraction of 9.6 per cent for India and growth of 2 per cent for China.

India faces a second wave of infections in some industrial states, after a decline in cases until early this year, and its tally of 11.47 million is the highest after the United States and Brazil.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has taken steps to support the economy, while projecting a contraction of 8 per cent in the current financial year, which ends this month, before economic growth picks up to about 10 per cent in the next financial year.

The Pew Centre estimated the number of poor people, with incomes of USD 2 or less each day, has gone up by 7.5 crore as the recession brought by the virus has clawed back years of progress.

A rise of nearly 10 per cent in domestic fuel prices this year, job losses and salary cuts have further hurt millions of households, forcing many people to seek jobs overseas.

In China, however, the fall in living standards was modest as numbers in the middle-income category probably decreased by 1 crore, while poverty levels remained unchanged, the report added.

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Morning Digest: Roads to be freed of toll booths in a year, says Nitin Gadkari; EU drug regulator backs AstraZeneca vaccine against COVID-19 after safety investigation, and more

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India will implement a GPS-based toll collection system and do away with all toll booths within a year, Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari informed the Lok Sabha on Thursday. He also shared details of the vehicle scrapping policy, first announced in the Union Budget for 2021-22, according to which the automobile industry in India will see a jump in turnover to ₹10 lakh crore from ₹4.5 lakh crore.

Chief Justice of India Sharad A. Bobde agreed with advocate Prashant Bhushan on Thursday to urgently hear a plea by NGO Association for Democratic Reforms to stay the sale of a new set of electoral bonds on April 1, before Assembly elections in crucial States such as West Bengal and Tamil Nadu.

Top U.S. and Chinese officials offered sharply different views of the world on March 18 as the two sides met face-to-face for the first time since President Joe Biden took office. In unusually pointed remarks for a staid diplomatic meeting, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Chinese Communist Party foreign affairs chief Yang Jiechi took aim at each other’s policies at the start of two days of talks in Alaska.

The EU’s drug watchdog said on March 18 it is still convinced the benefits of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine outweigh the risks following an investigation into reports of blood disorders that prompted more than a dozen nations to suspend its use.

The Rajya Sabha on Wednesday passed the Insurance Amendment Bill 2021 that increases the maximum foreign investment allowed in an insurance company from 49% to 74%, amid criticism from the Opposition parties on the clause enabling “control and ownership” by foreign investors.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday forbade judges from making gender stereotypical comments like “’good women are sexually chaste”, women who drink and smoke ‘ask’ for sexual advances or presume that a sexually active woman consented to rape while hearing cases of sexual offence.

Union Communications and Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said on Thursday that climate activist Disha Ravi’s arrest was based on law and order and it is under judicial process. He added that the House should consider “should some people abuse social media internationally to defame India to promote secessionism.”

Former Chief Economic Advisor (CEA) Arvind Subramanian resigned from Ashoka University on Thursday, days after noted columnist and political commentator Pratap Bhanu Mehta’s exit. In his resignation letter, Dr. Subramanian, said he had been “devastated” by “the circumstances involving the ‘resignation’ of Professor Pratap Bhanu Mehta” two days earlier.

In a major embarrassment to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), two candidates announced by the party on Thursday for the Assembly polls from Kolkata have refused to contest on the party’s ticket.

The Supreme Court on Thursday stayed suo motu proceedings before the Delhi High Court on the administration of COVID-19 vaccine and transferred the case to itself. A Bench led by Chief Justice of India Sharad A. Bobde said a similar case concerning the vaccination drive was already pending in the Supreme Court, and the case from the Delhi High Court could be heard along with it.

The Supreme Court on Thursday agreed to urgently hear a plea to release and protect over 150 Rohingya refugees reportedly “detained” in Jammu. Chief Justice of India S.A. Bobde agreed to hear the application filed by a member of the Rohingya community, Mohammad Salimullah, represented by advocates Prashant Bhushan and Cheryl d’Souza, on April 25 (Thursday). Mr. Bhushan made an oral mention before the CJI for an early hearing.

The Lok Sabha on Thursday passed the supplementary demand for grants (second batch for 2020-21) but not before significant concerns raised by Opposition leaders on the government’s disinvestment and asset monetisation plans, and rising fuel prices.

If Ishan Kishan was unfortunate to be ruled out of the fourth T20I due to a groin strain, lady luck smiled on his replacement Suryakumar Yadav. The Mumbai cricketer, dropped for the previous outing after not having faced a ball on his debut in the second T20I, grabbed his chance and made it count.

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Govt. hospitals get ready for surge in COVID-19 cases

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With infrastructure intact, the authorities are ready to meet any exigency in the intake of patients

With the number of fresh COVID-19 infections steadily rising in the city, the government hospitals are in a state of preparedness.

The infrastructure created was in place and the hospitals are gearing up to add more facilities and manpower in case of a surge.

The major government medical college hospitals set up exclusive COVID-19 facilities last year. As the number of fresh cases started to decline, the hospitals resumed their regular activities such as elective surgeries and outpatient services since October 2020.

In the last 10 days, the number of cases had been rising in Chennai. However, hospital authorities said the treatment facilities were intact.

At the Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital (RGGGH), Tower 3 continues to be an exclusive COVID-19 facility with three floors of 120 beds each. Of these, 40 to 50 beds were allotted for intensive care units. “We have four wings on each floor, two each for ICUs and two for patients in need of oxygen and high flow nasal cannula. The hospital’s COVID-19 bed strength is 1,618,” E. Theranirajan, dean of RGGGH, said.

On an average, the COVID-19 outpatient department received 150 to 160 patients a day while there were 184 in-patients — 111 who had tested positive for COVID-19 and 73 persons with suspected symptoms of COVID-19. “On an average, we are admitting 10 to 20 COVID-19 positive patients a day,” he said. Doctors and staff nurses were adequately posted.

Well prepared

The Government Medical College Hospital, Omandurar Estate, has 258 in-patients. Of them, 178 were positive for COVID-19.

“We are in a state of preparedness. We did not dismantle the infrastructure created for COVID-19. Already, 550 beds were allotted for COVID-19. We have 300 beds in place and will increase [their number] as and when required. We have COVID-19 facility in Tower 2, while two floors in Tower 3 are available. We activated our operation theatres and all other non-COVID activities. If needed, we might slowly de-escalate non-COVID activities,” R. Jayanthi, dean of the hospital, said.

The vaccination was running simultaneously at four sites, covering 500 people a day, she said. She said that people should strictly follow COVID-19 norms such as masking, maintaining physical distancing and hand hygiene to prevent cases from rising while all those eligible should get vaccinated.

P. Balaji, dean of Government Stanley Medical College Hospital, said the COVID-19 bed strength was 1,200. “The dedicated block continues to function with 600 beds now. We held meetings with our staff , including professors and nurses, on how to be ready if there was a surge in cases. We have an adequate stock of personal protective equipment,” he said. The hospital had 60 patients with COVID-19.

At the Government Kilpauk Medical College Hospital, dean P. Vasanthamani said the construction of a new block was under way. “We have 180 beds in a new block for COVID-19 patients. If needed, we are planning to step up the facility,” she said.

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