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Eco/Invest/Demography

SoftBank-backed India’s Ola to invest $326 million in electric-scooter plant

The Indian government has been pushing automakers to move to cleaner fuel technology, especially electric, in an effort to reduce its oil import bill and curb pollution in major cities.

While carmakers have been slow to launch electric vehicles (EVs), mainly due to the high cost of batteries and weak demand from buyers, sales of electric scooters and rickshaws have picked up pace and are leading India’s electrification drive.

The country needs an investment of over $180 billion in vehicle production and charging infrastructure until 2030 to meet its EV ambition, according to the CEEW Centre for Energy Finance (CEEW-CEF), an Asian think tank.

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Aviva to sell Vietnamese business to Canada’s ManuLife

Aviva, under new boss Amanda Blanc, is looking to sell its businesses in continental Europe and Asia, to focus on Britain, Ireland and Canada, after years of share price underperformance in the life and general insurer irked investors.
Asia has emerged as a battleground for foreign insurers who are attracted by the region’s lower insurance penetration levels and faster growth rates for life insurance premiums than in their home markets.

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Digital registration, allocating manufacturers: Guidelines for Covid-19 vaccination drive

The Covid-19 vaccine will be offered first to healthcare workers, frontline workers and to persons above 50 years of age, followed by persons younger than 50 years of age with associated comorbidities based on the evolving pandemic situation, and finally to the remaining population based on the disease epidemiology and vaccine availability.
At the vaccination site, only pre-registered beneficiaries will be vaccinated in accordance with the prioritisation, and there will be no provision for on-the-spot registrations.
Under phase one of the vaccination, it is planned to vaccinate nearly 30 crore population.

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Health ministry’s telemedicine service eSanjeevani records 1 million teleconsultations

The roll-out of eSanjeevani in India is supposedly the first-of-its-kind of digital transformation in the delivery of health services at national scale by a developing country.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, eSanjeevani not only brought about a huge digital transformation in the delivery of health services but had also boosted the digital health ecosystem in the country, the statement said.

The eSanjeevani initiative of the health ministry is serving in two streams in 28 states and union territories.

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‘New variant’ of coronavirus identified in Britain

“We’ve currently identified over 1,000 cases with this variant predominantly in the South of England although cases have been identified in nearly 60 different local authority areas.”We do not know the extent to which this is because of the new variant but no matter its cause we have to take swift and decisive action which unfortunately is absolutely essential to control this deadly disease while the vaccine is rolled out,”said Health Secretary Matt Hancock said

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Bacteria that travel across continents in atmospheric dust can impact climate & ecosystems

According to scientists, including those from the University of Granada (UGR) in Spain, these aerosols act like a “launch vehicle” for bacteria, and may pose risk of disease transmission across continents.

They explained that iberulites are giant atmospheric bioaerosols made of multiple minerals, measuring on average one hundred microns approximately.

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