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Health

How Mumbai’s Dharavi chased the virus has lesson for developing countries

Authorities have knocked on 47,500 doors since April to measure temperatures and oxygen levels, screened almost 700,000 people in the slum cluster and set up fever clinics. Those showing symptoms were shifted to nearby schools and sports clubs converted into quarantine centers. Fresh daily infections are now down to a third compared with early May, more than half the sick are recovering, and the number of deaths plummeted this month in the tenement where as many as eighty residents share a toilet.
“It was next to impossible to follow social distancing,” said Kiran Dighavkar, assistant commissioner at Mumbai’s municipality, who is in charge of leading the fight in Dharavi. “The only option then was to chase the virus rather than wait for the cases to come. To work proactively, rather than reactively.”

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Females in India more prone to Covid death risk than males: Study

The researchers said as of May 20, 2020, males shared a higher burden (66 per cent) of COVID-19 infections than females (34 per cent) but the infection is more or less evenly distributed in under-five as well as elderly age groups.
The scientists said the number of confirmed cases in India depends upon the testing facility and capture of the data on age-sex specificities of Covid-19 cases, which they added “has been inadequate.”

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India’s COVID-19 cases jump from 2 lakh to 3 lakh in 10 days as it records worst daily spike

India took 64 days to cross the 1 lakh-mark from 100 cases, then in another fortnight it reached the grim milestone of two lakh cases. It has now become the fourth worst-hit nation by the pandemic with a caseload of 3,08,993, according to coronavirus statistics website Worldometer.

However, the Health Ministry said on Friday the doubling time of coronavirus cases has improved to 17.4 days from 15.4 days. And its data updated at 8 am on Saturday showed active cases at 1,45,779 and those who have recovered at 1,54,329; one patient has migrated.

“Thus, around 49.9 per cent patients have recovered so far,” a ministry official said.

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Encourage non-motorised transport systems as they are environment-friendly: HUA

It is imperative that transmission of infection through public transport is curbed by adopting the right sanitisation, containment and social distancing measures, the Union Housing and Urban Affairs Ministry said.

“Touch-less systems like BHIM, PhonePe, Google Pay, PayTM and National Common Mobility Card will reduce human interaction in operations of public transit systems,” it said.

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France looks to insure businesses for future pandemics

France’s private insurers would provide business-interruption cover of up to 2 billion euros ($2.2 billion) a year in total for small companies hit by the fallout of any future pandemics, under a system proposed by the industry body.

The proposals, which would not apply to the current crisis, are aimed at helping 2.9 million small and mid-sized companies to cover some losses should they be required by the state to shut down their businesses if disaster strikes again.Under the proposed mechanism, known as CATEX, private insurers and reinsurers would provide coverage of up to 2 billion euros annually to businesses overall, beyond which the state would step in via public reinsurer CCR.
The new guarantee would be built into either fire insurance contracts, which all France companies have; or into business interruption policies, which 50% of businesses have.

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Govt says no community transmission of Covid-19 yet, but experts disagree

“It’s just that the health authorities are not admitting it. Even ICMR’s own study of SARI (severe acute respiratory illness) showed that about 40 per cent of those who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 did not have any history of overseas travel or contact to a known case. If this is not community transmission, what is,” Leading virologist Shahid Jameel

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