“The sentiments on overall spending remained unchanged as higher spending on essential items were offset by a drop in non-essential expenditure with consumers expecting further contraction in discretionary expenditure in the year ahead,” the RBI said.
With forecasters warning of a third wave, any new restrictions could spell more bad news for the country, where private consumption makes up some 60% of gross domestic product.
Indian health authorities have so far approved the use of vaccines developed by AstraZeneca, Bharat Biotech, Russia’s Gamaleya Institute and Moderna.
The government and Moderna are still trying to sort out issues over imports of the vaccine and indemnity, a top executive at Indian drugmaker and Moderna’s local distribution partner Cipla told Reuters in an interview on Friday.
“The Union minister asked all the heads of medical institutions to be the frontrunners in showcasing the importance of this social vaccine to break the chain of transmission of the disease in the country,” Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said.
“We will probably have more deaths out of starvation if the rural migratory population who flock to cities during the pujas and earn some money during the festivity are deprived of the opportunity,” said Subrata Mukherjee, a cabinet minister in the fourth-most populous state of West Bengal, which has one of India’s highest coronavirus caseloads.
“In Central and South Asia, 22 per cent of people in urban areas, or 153 million people, lack access to handwashing. Nearly 50 per cent of urban Bangladeshis, or 29 million people; and 20 per cent of urban Indians or 91 million, lack basic handwashing facilities at home,” it said.
“Our method quickly detects intact virus particles,” said Professor Achilles Kapanidis, at Oxford’s Department of Physics, adding that this meant the test would be “simple, extremely rapid, and cost-effective”.
Rapid antigen tests are seen as key in rolling out mass-testing and re-opening economies while the coronavirus is still circulating, and those that are already in use are faster and cheaper but less accurate than existing molecular PCR tests.
Extreme poverty is set to rise for the first time in more than two decades, and persistent output losses imply a major setback to living standards versus the pre-pandemic days, the IMF said.“The poor are getting poorer with close to 90 million people expected to fall into extreme deprivation this year,” said Gopinath.
“She mentioned that the V-shaped pattern of recovery is being seen in several high-frequency indicators, including manufacturing PMI that reached the highest level in last eight years in the month of September 2020, presenting a strong recovery prospect for the manufacturing sector,” it said.
Risk management and transfer has always been about collaboration between client, broker and insurance carrier to find the most suitable solutions for risk problems. Without a doubt, the COVID-19 pandemic has forced us all to find different ways to do that – with the opportunity for face-to-face brainstorming put on hold, we need to find other ways to continue to innovate.
“The emerging (WHO) data appears inconsistent, with more robust evidence from multiple randomized, controlled studies published in peer-reviewed journals validating the clinical benefit of remdesivir,” Gilead told Reuters.
“We are concerned the data from this open-label global trial has not undergone the rigorous review required to allow for constructive scientific discussion, particularly given the limitations of the trial design.”
The world’s richest countries have locked up most of the world’s potential vaccine supply through 2021, raising worries that poor and vulnerable communities will not be able to get the shots. Meanwhile, an ambitious international project to deliver coronavirus vaccines to the world’s poorest people, called Covax, is facing potential shortages of money, cargo planes, refrigeration and vaccines themselves.
Most European governments eased lockdowns over the summer to start reviving economies already battered by the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic.
But the return of normal activity – from packed restaurants to new university terms – fuelled a sharp spike in cases all over the continent.