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Eco/Invest/Demography

Pfizer seeks emergency approval for COVID-19 vaccine in India, media say

The U.S. company, whose vaccine was recently approved by the British government, has written to the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI), CNN-News18 reported citing a government source.Officials at the DCGI and the health ministry did not respond to requests for comment. A government official, however, told Reuters that no application had been received as of Saturday night.

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1st dynamic Covid surveillance system rolls out in 195 nations

“We can inform leaders where the outbreak is occurring before it shows up in overcrowded hospitals and morgues,” said Lori Post from Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. said.
“Current systems are static and ours is dynamic.”

Northwestern is hosting a dashboard for the new Covid tracking system — open to anyone — with the new metrics as well as traditional metrics.

Each country’s dashboard will be monitored to inform policy leaders around the globe. Users will have metrics of the whole world at their fingertips.

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COVID-19 could push number of people living in extreme poverty to over 1 billion by 2030: UN

“Severe long-term effects of the COVID-19 pandemic could push an additional 207 million people into extreme poverty on top of the current pandemic trajectory, bringing the total to over 1 billion by 2030,” noted the study.

The ‘Baseline COVID’ scenario, based on current mortality rates and the most recent growth projections by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), would result in 44 million more people living in extreme poverty by 2030 compared to the development trajectory the world was on before the pandemic.

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Banks need to hire chief risk officers to deal with cybercrimes: Deloitte

“…these (cyber) attacks are becoming complex day by day. To address these challenges, banks need to appoint experienced Chief Risk Officers who can take the responsibility of skilling the employees and lead investment in military-grade cybersecurity solutions to detect the most advanced attacks,” said the Deloitte report on “Digitizing the post COVID world: The ‘3I’ approach”.

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Foreign funds colonising Indian startups: Naukri.com founder Bikhchandani

Internet entrepreneur Sanjeev Bikhchandani says an estimated Rs 17 trillion of market cap has been transferred abroad after young Indian start-ups were forced to shift their company domicile overseas by foreign investors promising the funds they need for growth.

“Shades of the East India Company type of situation here – Indian market, Indian customers, Indian developers, Indian workforce. However 100% foreign ownership, foreign investors. IP and data transferred overseas. Transfer pricing issues foggy,” Internet entrepreneur Sanjeev Bikhchandani tweeted.

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AstraZeneca and Oxford’s stories clash on COVID-19 vaccine

The discrepancy, reported for the first time by Reuters, centres on the regimen administered to a smaller group of volunteers in the late-stage trials, of half a dose followed by a full dose. This diverged from the original plan of two full doses, given to the majority of participants.

The half-dose pattern was found to be 90% effective, versus the 62% success rate of the two-full-dose main study, based on interim data

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