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Eco/Invest/Demography

New kind of loans and bonds could fill $28 billion Covid funding gap: WHO

The WHO and GAVI vaccine alliance aim to provide poor and middle-income countries with diagnostic tests, drugs and vaccines through a fund known as the Access to Covid-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator, which was set up last April.

Bruce Aylward, a senior WHO adviser and its ACT coordinator, said that new financing mechanisms – including concessional loans and catastrophe bonds – were discussed at a meeting of the ACT facilitation council on Monday, co-chaired by Norway and South Africa.

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Auto sector suffered Rs 2,300-cr loss a day in lockdowns, says par panel

“The committee was informed by the auto industry associations that all the major original equipment manufacturers (OEM) have cut down their production by 18-20 per cent due to low demand and decline in sales of vehicles. As a result, the employment scenario in the automobile sector has been affected and an estimated job loss in the auto sector at 3.45 lakh,” the panel said in its report.

Hiring of manpower has been stopped in the auto industry sector. Besides that, 286 auto dealers have been closed. Further, production cuts in the automobile sector have a percolating negative impact on the component industry adversely affecting the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) engaged in the automobile spare parts manufacturing, the report states.

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UV-emitting LED lights can kill novel coronavirus quickly & efficiently, says study

In order to disinfect a bus, train, sports hall, or plane by chemical spraying, the scientists said physical manpower is needed along with time for the chemicals to act on the surface.

“Disinfection systems based on LED bulbs, however, can be installed in the ventilation system and air conditioner, for example, and sterilise the air sucked in and then emitted into the room,” Hadas Mamane, co-author of the study from the American Friends of Tel Aviv University in the US. said.

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Less than 45 pc of households in five states use clean fuel for cooking Govt survey

It found that over 70 per cent of the population in 16 states are living in households that use an improved sanitation facility.

Lakshadweep (99.8 per cent) and Kerala (98.7 per cent) have the highest percentage of population living in households with an improved sanitation facility, while Bihar (49.4 per cent) and Ladakh (42.3 per cent) have the lowest, the survey said.

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Over 60 pc women in 12 states and UTs never used internet: Survey

The states and UTs where less than 40 per cent women have used the internet are Andhra Pradesh (21 per cent), Assam (28.2 per cent), Bihar (20.6 per cent), Gujarat (30.8 per cent), Karnataka (35 per cent), Maharashtra (38 per cent), Meghalaya (34.7 per cent), Telangana (26.5 per cent), Tripura (22.9 per cent), West Bengal (25.5 per cent), Dadra & Nagar Haveli and Daman & Diu (36.7 per cent) and Andaman & Nicobar Islands (34.8 per cent), the survey revealed.

In comparison, more percentage of men have used the internet.

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$83 billion global insured cat losses in 2020, the fifth-costliest on record:Swiss Re 

”As with COVID-19, climate change will be a huge test of global resilience.Neither pandemics nor climate change are ‘black swan’ events. But while COVID-19 has an expiry date, climate change does not, and failure to ‘green’ the global economic recovery now will increase costs for society in future,”said Jerome Jean Haegeli, Swiss Re Group Chief Economist.

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