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Covid-19 Pandemic:US life insurance claims may touch $7.2 bn

The estimate includes costs for policyholders between the ages of 56 and 74, which are projected to reach as much as a combined $4.1 billion for individual and group plans, the researcher said in a study released Thursday. Life insurers are in good shape and should be able to manage surging costs, according to the report’s author, Samantha Chow.

Individual policies would account for 81% of claims, while group plans such as those offered by employers would make up the rest, the Aite study found. Insurers’ main challenge will be how to handle claims as economic hardship spreads, Chow said.

“The biggest issue is going to be that these beneficiaries that are calling after losing a loved one who might have passed as a result of Covid-19 — they’ve incurred a lot of health-care costs,” she said. “They might need the money really quickly in order to survive.”

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half of world’s workforce risks losing livelihoods in pandemic: ILO

“It shows I think in the starkest possible terms that the jobs employment crisis and all of its consequences is deepening by comparison with our estimates of 3 weeks ago,” ILO Director-General Guy Ryder told a briefing, foreseeing a “massive” poverty impact.Already, wages of the world’s 2 billion informal workers plunged by an estimated global average of 60% in the first month that the crisis unfolded in each region, the ILO said.

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India’s Glenmark to conduct trials for potential COVID-19 drug

Favipiravir, manufactured under the brand name Avigan by a unit of Japan’s Fujifilm Holdings Corp (4901.T) and approved for use as an anti-flu drug in the Asian island country in 2014, has been effective, with no obvious side-effects, in helping coronavirus patients recover, a Chinese official told reporters at a news conference last month.

“After having successfully developed the API and the formulations … Glenmark is all geared to immediately begin clinical trials on favipiravir on COVID-19 patients in India,” Sushrut Kulkarni, executive vice-president for Global R&D, Glenmark Pharmaceuticals, said in a statement.

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COVID-19 death toll rises to 1,074; cases 33,050,MHA allows stranded to return home

MHA guidelines for movement of stranded persons

-States/UTs to appoint nodal authorities and develop standard protocol for receiving and sending persons

-All stranded persons are to be registered with the sending and receiving states

-In case of inter-state movement of such persons, consult each other and mutually agree to the movement by road

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