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More than 50 countries launch Covid-19 vaccination campaigns

In Asia, Singapore launched its campaign on Wednesday with the same vaccine.

Other countries on the Asian continent however have decided to take their time: India, Japan and Taiwan plan to begin vaccinations in the first quarter of 2021 and the Philippines and Pakistan in the second quarter, while Afghanistan and Thailand plan to start in mid-2021.

RBI comes up with Digital Payments Index

The RBI-DPI comprises of five broad parameters that enable measurement of deepening and penetration of digital payments in the country over different time periods.

The parameters are payment enablers (weight 25 per cent), payment infrastructure–demand-side factors (10 per cent), payment infrastructure – supply-side factors (15 per cent), payment performance (45 per cent) and consumer centricity (5 per cent).

Post Office Savings Bank likely to be interconnected with other banks by April

“Besides making services digitally accessible to people, we are focussing on doorstep delivery of services. This year we remitted Rs 900 crore money through around 85 lakh transactions and verified 3 lakh pensioners on their doorstep,” Department of Posts Secretary Pradipta Kumar Bisoi said.

All passengers from UK to be tested for COVID-19 on arrival between Jan 8-Jan 30: Health ministry

If a passenger tests COVID-positive on arrival, passengers seated in the same row, three rows in front and three rows behind would also be subjected to institutional quarantine in separate quarantine centers, the SOP said.

The passengers who are found COVID-negative after the tests conducted at the airport would be advised home quarantine for 14 days and the concerned state or district administration should regularly follow up with them, it said.

India records less than 20,000 fresh COVID-19 cases; no. of recoveries goes past 99 lakh

The number of people who have recuperated from the disease surged to 99,06,387, pushing the national recovery rate to 96.12 per cent, while the COVID-19 case fatality rate stood at 1.45 per cent.

There are 2,50,183 active coronavirus cases in the country, which accounts for 2.43 per cent of the total caseload, the data stated.

SolarWinds hackers accessed Microsoft source code, the company says

The SolarWinds hack is among the most ambitious cyber operations ever disclosed, compromising at least half-a-dozen federal agencies and potentially thousands of companies and other institutions. U.S. and private sector investigators have spent the holidays combing through logs to try to understand whether their data has been stolen or modified.

Govt plans chat bot like Alexa, Google Voice to deliver public services

“The platform should be able to provide assistance with general tasks, including but not limited to availing services of government and available on the UMANG platform such as registration, login, reset password, department service relation information, event, (and) new launch…etc,” the request for proposal document said.

The chatbot should be able to turn speech into a textual input and turn text into speech.

Accidental death insurance cover for Delhi Police personnel raised to ₹78 lakh

Delhi Police Commissioner S.N. Shrivastava said that the Delhi Police negotiated a better insurance claim structure with Axis Bank, therefore, insurance cover for natural deaths has been raised from Rs 5 lakh to Rs 28 lakh and from Rs 30 lakh to Rs 78 lakh for accidental death. Apart from this, the family of the cop will be compensated with Rs 10 lakh if he commits suicide.

Expert panel clears Bharat Biotech’s vaccine for restricted emergency use

Covaxin has been indigenously developed by Bharat Biotech in collaboration with the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).

The Subject Expert Committee (SEC) on COVID-19 of the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO) on Saturday again deliberated on the emergency use authorisation (EUA) application of the Hyderabad-based pharmaceutical firm after it submitted additional data, facts and analysis subsequent to Friday’s review meeting, a source said.

Have to assume pandemic is going to get worse: Fauci

Fauci’s comments on Tuesday came after the US registered a record high 65,000 deaths in the past 28 days, making December the worst month for coronavirus fatalities since the start of the pandemic.

December’s figure, roughly equivalent to over 1.6 Americans lost to the virus every minute, marked a significant surge from that in the entire month of November which registered 36,964 fatalities.

The country’s overall the overall death toll currently stood at 338,544, the highest in the world, according to the Johns Hopkins University.

Study uncovers blood vessel damage, inflammation in COVID-19 patients’ brains

The researchers saw no signs of infection in the brain tissue samples even though they used several methods for detecting genetic material or proteins from SARS-CoV-2.

“So far, our results suggest that the damage we saw may not have been not caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus directly infecting the brain,” said Dr. Nath. “In the future, we plan to study how COVID-19 harms the brain’s blood vessels and whether that produces some of the short- and long-term symptoms we see in patients.”

BBB to interview 5 candidates on Jan 4 to select CMD of Oriental Insurance Company

The shortlisted candidates who will be appearing for the interview for OIC CMD post are – Anjan Dey, director and general manager, GIC Re, Shobha G. Reddy, general manager,National Insurance Company(NIC), M. Bhaskar, general manager GIC Re, Suchita Gupta, GM, GIC Re, Surya Swaroop Saxena, GM, Agriculture Insurance Company of India.