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Eco/Invest/Demography

Global banks unwind India currency trades worth billions after RBI warning

Some lenders had racked up exposures of more than $1 billion each by using a regulatory loophole created in February to convert rupee deposits into dollars using a buy-sell swap — buying the greenback now while selling the same amount at a specified date in the future. They then used the proceeds to purchase U.S. government debt and profited from the arbitrage, paying around 3.5% on the local currency deposits and earning 4.9% on the 12-month yield on the currency pair.

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Delta tears across US, cases and hospitalisations at six-month high

Nationwide, Covid-19 cases have averaged 100,000 for three days in a row, up 35 per cent over the past week, according to a Reuters tally of public health data. The surge of the disease was strongest in Louisiana, Florida and Arkansas.Hospitalisations rose 40 per cent and deaths, a lagging indicator, registered an 18 per cent uptick in the past week with the most fatalities by population in Arkansas.

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COVID-19: India’s drug regulator approves study on mixing of Covaxin and Covishield doses

Separately, a recent study by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) involving 98 people, 18 of whom had inadvertently received Covishield as the first dose and Covaxin as the second in Uttar Pradesh, showed that combining these two COVID-19 vaccines elicited better immunogenicity than two doses of the same vaccine.

The study also found that immunisation with combination of Covishield and Covaxin was safe and the adverse effects were also found to be similar when compared to the same dose regimen.

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German and Chinese insurers endure their costliest natural disasters as IPCC confirms rise in extreme weather events: Aon report 

Total economic losses due to catastrophic events across the globe exceed $52 billion. Seasonal monsoon flooding and associated convective storms continued in India throughout July, including a particularly intense spell from July 22-28. Hundreds of people were killed in July as the seasonal death toll rose to 534. The total economic loss in India increased to at least $1.6 billion; most of which is uninsured.

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Cap on trade margin of 42 non-scheduled cancer drugs by NPPA led to up to 90 pc reduction in MRP: Mandaviya

“The total annual savings on account of revision of ceiling prices of medicines under the National List of Essential Medicines (NLEM), price control of anti-diabetic and cardiovascular, fixation of ceiling price of stents, knee implants and capping of TMR on anti-cancer are estimated to the tune of Rs 12,500 crore,” Mansukh Mandaviya,
Minister of Health & Family Welfare and Chemical and Fertilizers, said.

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