Category:

Health

Business owners can sue insurer over coronavirus losses, US judge rule

The decision against Cincinnati Insurance Co by U.S. District Judge Stephen Bough in Kansas City appears to be first victory for policyholders suing insurers for improperly denying claims related to shutdowns caused by COVID-19.

Insurers had won similar cases in courts in Michigan and Washington, D.C., successfully arguing that coverage was not warranted because the virus travels through the air and does not cause physical damage.

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UK life insurers pay 90 million pounds in COVID-19 claims – trade body

Insurers received 7,000 life insurance claims from families of people who died from COVID-19 and 83% have been paid so far, the ABI said in a statement. Every life insurance claim has been accepted, it said.

The average payout is expected to be 63,000 pounds for an individual policy and 137,000 for a group policy.
Although they are paying life insurance claims, worsening life expectancy will mean pensions, often the bulk of their business, are paid for a shorter period, industry sources say.

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New Zealand considers freight as possible source of new coronavirus cluster

The source of the outbreak has baffled health officials, who said they were confident there were no local transmission of the virus in New Zealand for 102 days and that the family had not travelled overseas.

“We are working hard to put together pieces of the puzzle on how this family got infected,” said Director General of Health Ashley Bloomfield.

Investigations were zeroing in on the potential the virus was imported by freight. Bloomfield said surface testing was underway at an Auckland cool store where a man from the infected family worked.

“We know the virus can survive within refrigerated environments for quite some time,” Bloomfield said during a televised media conference.

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COVID-19: 60,963 fresh cases take India’s tally to 23,29,638

India’s rate of recovery has improved to 70.37% as 1,639,599 people, 56,110 in the last 24 hours, have been discharged from hospitals so far. “The TEST, TRACK, TREAT strategy showing desired result- early identification and prompt isolation/hospitalisation aiding exponential growth in recoveries,” the ministry tweeted on Wednesday.

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Facebook removes 7 mn posts for sharing false information on Covid-19

The world’s biggest social media company removed about 22.5 million posts containing hate speech on its flagship app in the second quarter, up from 9.6 million in the first quarter. It also deleted 8.7 million posts connected to extremist organizations, compared with 6.3 million in the prior period.

Facebook said it relied more heavily on automation technology for reviewing content during the months of April, May and June as it had fewer reviewers at its offices due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

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World reaction to Russia’s COVID-19 vaccine

The World Health Organization and Russian health authorities are discussing the process for possible WHO prequalification, a WHO spokesman said on Tuesday.

“Prequalification of any vaccine includes the rigorous review and assessment of all required safety and efficacy data,” WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic told a U.N. briefing in Geneva, referring to clinical trials.

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COVID-19: SC seeks response from Centre on plea to ban disinfection tunnels

“In the guise of preventing COVID-19 many sanitisation and disinfection devices have emerged which wrongfully claim to be effective in preventing the spread of this virus.”These include disinfection tunnels involving spraying and fumigation of disinfectants and disinfection tunnels exposing human beings to ultra violet rays with a belief of disinfecting them,” a PIL filed by law student Gursimran Singh Narula pleaded

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China’s Shenzhen says chicken imported from Brazil tests positive for coronavirus

Experts say that while the SARS-CoV-2 virus is capable of infiltrating food or food packaging materials, it cannot reproduce and cannot survive at room temperature for long.

However, Li Fengqin, who heads a microbiology lab at the China National Center for Food Safety Risk Assessment told reporters in June that contaminated food put in cold storage could be a potential source of transmission.

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