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Pandemic

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India needs Pandemic Pool to manage risks on long-term basis: CII

”This is the opportune time for India to have the first-mover advantage in the creation of the pandemic pool with a two-pronged strategy of going beyond the insurers and the government by inviting international reinsurers to supplement capital contribution for the pool and to incentivize state governments to participate with additional supplementary capital for greater protection to their denizens,” it added.

Large U.S. COVID-19 vaccine trials will exclude pregnant women for now

Bioethicists, vaccine and maternal health experts have argued for years that pregnant women should be included early in trials of pandemic vaccines so they would not need to wait until long after a successful candidate emerges. That debate fell on deaf ears in recent outbreaks of Ebola and Zika, but has taken on new urgency in the era of COVID-19, as studies show pregnant women are at increased risk of severe disease from the new coronavirus.

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U.S.consumer spending presses ahead; declining income poses challenge

The extra unemployment checks are worth about $75 billion per month and accounted for nearly 5% of personal income in June. A staggering 30.2 million Americans were receiving unemployment checks in the week ending July 11. Though government welfare payments have been declining after jumping 110% in April, unemployment benefits increased 8.5% in June.
Consumers socked away $1.3 trillion over the last three months. Savings funded spending last month, pulling the saving rate down to a still-high 19% from 24.2% in May.

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Southeast Asia poverty to surge in ‘socio-economic crisis’:U.N.

“Without alternative income, formal social protection systems or savings to buffer these shocks, workers and their families will be pushed into poverty, reversing decades of poverty reduction.”
The region-wide economy was expected to contract by 0.4 per cent in 2020, it said, while remittances from Southeast Asians working abroad were likely to fall by 13 per cent or $10 billion.

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More S.African insurers yield to customer demands to pay COVID BI claims

The FSCA and the Prudential Authority, which oversees the strength of the financial-services industry, last week struck a deal with insurers to consider once-off payments to help keep customers afloat, while courts decide whether insurers are correctly interpreting the terms of contracts.

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In Mumbai’s slums,over half of population probably infected with coronavirus,survey says

Suresh Kakani, an official at Mumbai’s civic body, said the results of the serological survey showed that the city may be inching towards herd immunity.
Around 65% of Mumbai’s 12 million people live in the cramped, airless slums, making for easy transmission of the disease. The survey found that only 16% of those living outside the slums had been exposed to the virus, the low proportion likely the result of social distancing and lockdowns.
About 57% of slum-dwellers have tested positive for antibodies for the coronavirus, from a random sample size of 7,000 people, according to the survey jointly conducted by Mumbai’s municipality, government think tank Niti Aayog and the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research.

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