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There needs to be one price for COVID-19 vaccines across the nation,” Supreme Court questions Central govt on dual policy

by | May 31, 2021 | , , , , ,

“Centre says it gets vaccines at low pricing since it buys in bulk, if this is the rationale then why do states have the higher price? There needs to be one price for the vaccines across the nation. Pandemic has evolved in last two months,” the Court said.
“In this case, if the purpose is to procure vaccines then why should the centre confine itself to only post 45 age people and leave pre 45 age entirely to state for arranging logistics. How do we look at the marginalised and economically weaker ones?” asked the Apex Court.

Drones for Health

by | May 31, 2021 | , ,

“When a woman has lost a lot of blood during childbirth and may need to be transferred to a bigger medical facility, she first needs to be stabilized where she is before being driven out of that place. The timely delivery of blood can be lifesaving. A drone can be sent to deliver the blood so that the patient is stabilized,” says Lorato Mokganya, Chief Health Officer in the Ministry of Health and Wellness.

India’s economic growth picks up before huge COVID-19 wave hit

by | May 31, 2021 | , , ,

Gross domestic product grew 1.6% in January-March compared with the same period a year earlier, mainly driven by state spending and manufacturing sector growth, data from the statistics ministry showed on Monday.

Economists said the country faces a slowdown in consumer demand as household incomes and jobs have declined, with limited scope for the government to offer growth stimulus due to its rising debt.

Smokers face 40-50 pc higher risk of severe diseases, death from Covid: Vardhan

by | May 31, 2021 | , ,

“We have set an ambitious target of reducing tobacco use by 30 per cent by 2025. Our tobacco control targets have been devised keeping in view the targets for control of non-communicable diseases and are consistent with the targets set under the SDGs. We will be soon releasing the findings of fourth round of Global Youth Tobacco Survey conducted among 13-15 year school going students,” Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said.

China-backed projects in Africa face fierce backlash from environmentalists

by | May 31, 2021 | , , ,

“There is no doubt that Chinese commercial actors … have tried to evade environmental requirements,” said Yun Sun, director of the China programme at the Stimson Centre in Washington.

Meanwhile, a senior fellow at Duke University’s Nicholas Institute, said Beijing was not unaware of the potential risks involved with private and state-owned firms operating in belt and road countries.

“Reducing these risks requires more uniformly applied standards and practices on environmental and social issues by China’s outbound actors, which is likely to come only via coherent policy requirements from the top down,” he said.

90 institutional investors sue Nissan over Ghosn’s financial misconduct cases

by | May 31, 2021 | ,

According to the complaint, the investors who have traded Nissan stocks through financial institutions since June 2011 argue that Nissan stock prices plunged after the company’s then Chairman Ghosn and Greg Kelly, a former Nissan executive, were arrested by Japanese prosecutors in November 2018 for underreporting Ghosn’s remuneration by billions of yen in financial reports over multiple years.

The investors maintain that Nissan could easily have forecast a drop in stock prices due to damaged trust in the company’s accounting and corporate governance if the incident was reported by news media.

X-Press Pearl loss will add to insurers’ container ship headaches

by | May 31, 2021 | , ,

Insurers will face hull and machinery, cargo and liability claims, although there is still much uncertainty about the size of the loss. The vessel itself was only three months old; it is unclear how much the hull was insured for and which company insured it.

Rob Hawes, head of marine at loss adjuster Crawford & Co. estimated that the cargo loss could be between $30 million and $50 million, based on the X-Press Pearl’s 2,700 container capacity and an assumption that a container houses an average of $15,000 to $20,000 of goods.

B1617 variant spreading worldwide at ‘frightening speed’: Experts

by | May 31, 2021 | , , , ,

“What is frightening is the speed at which this variant is able to spread and circulate widely within the community, often surpassing the capability of contact-tracing units to track and isolate exposed contacts to break the transmission chains, a Professor Teo Yik Ying, Dean of the National University of Singapore’s (NUS) Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, was quoted as saying.

“It has the potential to unleash a bigger pandemic storm than the world has previously seen,” Ying added.

Provide price capping waiver, indemnity for Moderna’s single-dose Covid-19 vaccine: Cipla to Govt

by | May 31, 2021 | , , , , ,

Requesting the government to provide confirmation on four critical points — exemption from price restriction, indemnification, bridging trial waiver and basic customs duty exemption,

Cipla has said such an assurance will help make this significant financial commitment of more than USD 1 billion (over Rs 7,250 crore) advance to Moderna for its booster vaccine in India, sources privy to the development said.

Women in India had irregular gap in menstrual cycle during COVID-19: Study

by | May 31, 2021 | , ,

Among other aspects of menstrual hygiene, this year’s survey specifically aimed to gauge the impact of COVID-19 and lockdown in India on periods in women. The survey revealed that more than 41 per cent of women experienced an unusually irregular gap in their periods.

This is startling because only 13.7 per cent of women who participated in the survey said they were infected with COVID-19. As many as 64.5 per cent of women said that the current COVID times had impacted their stress and anxiety levels, which could be a possible reason for irregularity in the gap between two menstrual periods in so many women.