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India’s COVID-19 caseload rises to 97.96 lakh with 29,398 fresh infections

The number of people who have recuperated from the disease surged to 92,90,834 on Friday, pushing the national recovery rate to 94.84 per cent. The COVID-19 case fatality rate stands at 1.45 per cent.

The COVID-19 active caseload remained below 4 lakh for the fifth consecutive day.

There are 3,63,749 active coronavirus infections in the country which comprise 3.71 per cent of the total caseload, the data stated.

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ICICI Lombard launches new Health Insurance products

With the unlimited reset benefit, policyholders can reset up to 100% of the base sum insured unlimited times in a policy year for an un-related ailment. The Sum Insured Protector feature increases the sum insured every year as per the prevailing inflation rates thereby ensuring that customers are adequately covered due to rising prices.

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270 million people face starvation, says WFP as it receives Nobel Peace Prize

“Because of so many wars, climate change, the widespread use of hunger as a political and military weapon, and a global health pandemic that makes all of that exponentially worse — 270 million people are marching toward starvation,” David Beasley said from the WFP headquarters in Rome, upon receiving the Nobel medal and diploma.

“Failure to address their needs will cause a hunger pandemic which will dwarf the impact of COVID. And if that’s not bad enough, out of that 270 million, 30 million depend on us 100% for their survival,” he added.

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World’s largest vaccine maker India tees up global blitz to contain virus

Others that are likely to benefit from an expected surge in demand are: pharmaceutical firms Dr Reddy’s Laboratories, Cadila Healthcare and Hetero; logistics company FedEx; cold chain storage specialist Snowman Logistics and Hindustan Syringes & Medical Devices, among others.

Hindustan Syringes says it will increase capacity by 42% to 1 billion units by the first half of next year. It has already shipped some 140 million syringes that disable themselves after one use for the global vaccine distribution program COVAX.

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Indian pharma industry’s COVID-19 vaccine plans

SII has already made and stockpiled more than 50 million doses of COVISHIELD and aims to ramp up production to 400 million doses by mid-2021. It has already applied for emergency use authorization of the vaccine in India.

The company could sell the vaccine at 250 rupees ($3.39) per dose to the Indian government and 1,000 rupees on the country’s private market. By comparison, the Pfizer’s supply deal with the U.S. government amounts to $39 for a two-dose course, while Moderna plans to charge between $25 and $37 per dose.

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UN chief warns ‘vaccine nationalism’ is moving at full speed

The UN chief on Wednesday reiterated his call for vaccines to be treated as a global public good, available to everyone, everywhere on the planet, especially in Africa. And he appealed for 4.2 billion in the next two months for the World Health Organisation’s COVAX programme, an ambitious project to buy and deliver coronavirus vaccines for the world’s poorest people.

After a virtual UN meeting with the African Union, Guterres said at a news conference that financing COVAX is the only way to guarantee vaccines will be available in Africa and other developing areas.

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How the novel coronavirus has evolved and adapted to human hosts

In Asia, the original L strain persisted for longer as several countries, including China, were quick to shut borders and curtail movement. In contrast, North America and Europe did not restrict movement as much, at least initially, which allowed the G strains to spread – and mutate – at a faster pace.

“This virus moves in superspreader events, which means the virus doesn’t have to be particularly contagious,” said Catherine Bennett, epidemiology chair in the Faculty of Health at Melbourne’s Deakin University. “We will see different patterns because of cluster transmission.”

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