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Centre denies Covid 19 Community transmission

Amid reports of officials in some states saying that community transmission has taken place. Centre clarified on Tuesday that India still has not reached community transmission phase.

Health Ministry officials quoting the Delhi Sero survey results says “When just 20% of the population is affected, one cannot say there is community transmission” According to Rajesh Bhushan, officer on special duty (OSD) in the health ministry “WHO does not elucidate community transmission.

It provides its member – states room to elucidate the stage of transmission” Adding to this, he also mentioned transmission is usually ” elucidated as a stage when it is impossible to trace the chain of transmission, it seems to be difficult to identify who is impacted by whom”.

However, Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan said community transmission is happening in two places in Thiruvananthapuram and a senior West Bengal official also said the same with regards to a locality. But , Rajesh Bhushan, OSD added saying There are “Tassel of cases and pockets of localised transmission” of Covid-19, but we still stand by what we earlier said about community transmission.

India reported 37,724 new coronavirus cases and 648 deaths in the 24 hours. The serological survey conducted by the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) to assess the exposure of the coronavirus in the population showed 20 per cent prevalence of Covid in eight of the 11 districts. Further, it also showed that over 77 per cent were vulnerable to the virus.

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COVID-19: Assam student pays price for asking hospital guards to be vigilant

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Days after the sensational news of Jayaraj and Fenix of South India and the killing of Jayanta Bora in Jorhat, Assam, a similar incident happened on 20th July 2020 in GMCH, Guwahati, Assam that sent shock waves across the state.

The development took place when Rajesh Chetri, an aspiring law student visited Gauhati Medical College and Hospital recently, to fetch some medicines for his friend at a distant. At GMCH’s main gate, the home guard was seated very leniently when Rajesh entered.

After entering and exiting from the same entrance more than once, he noticed that the home guards, who were in duty to check the crowd’s body temperature, were reluctant of their job. Almost many entered the hospital without being screened through the front gate.

When Rajesh started asking the guard of their leniency, they started revolting back and argued that the thermal meter was not working. The scene ended into a heated argument between the two. Rajesh began screening the entire circumstance to be on the safer side.

In the video footage, Rajesh can be seen in a blood-soaked shirt, and his head with a bandage. Although there is still no clear evidence that whether the victim hit himself by chance or the two had a physical scuffle, Rajesh claims that those home guard harassed him and had beaten him.

After the trail, an FIR has been lodged in Bhangagarh Police Station. According to the sources it is stated that the cell phone of the victim has been taken in the custody.

The news of Rajesh and the Home guard, however, has gone viral over Facebook and WhatsApp.

To note the currently active cases of COVID-19 in Assam are more than 7000 in number and increasing each day.

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Corona update: India cases cross 1 million mark; Covaxin clinical trials done

With record number of 34,884 Covid-19 cases in the last 24 hours, the total number of cases in India crossed the 1 million mark as it reached to 1,040,457.

With a surge in Covid-19 cases in Bihar, West Bengal, Assam and Odisha, the Union health ministry has asked these states to make renewed efforts to suppress transmission of the virus and keep case fatality rate below one per cent.

More than 25,000 people have died in India after testing positive for COVID-19.

While some of the top affected states in the country are showing signs of the virus slowing down, new hotspots are emerging from states like Karnataka, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh where Covid-19 infections are cases on the rise.

A massive chunk of India’s coronavirus load comes from the top affected cities – most in Maharashtra. Among the top 10 cities based on active cases, Delhi has the lowest proportion of active cases – 15.2 percent.

Meanwhile, in another development, Human clinical trials for Covaxin, a vaccine candidate for Covaxin, a vaccine candidate for Covid-19 being developed by Bharat Biotech has been initiated across the country in 375volunteers, the company sources said on Friday.

“India’s first indigenous Covid-19 vaccine Covaxin initiated phase-1 clinical trials across the country on 15th July 2020. This is a randomised, double-blind, placebo- controlled clinical trial in 375 volunteers in India,” the sources said.

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Debdutta Ray, West Bengal’s first senior government officer to succumb to COVID-19

Debdutta Ray

A deputy magistrate in West Bengal became the first senior government officer in the state to have succumbed to COVID-19. According to a health department official, the DM died on Monday.

Debdutta Ray, who was posted in Hooghly district, died at a private hospital in Serampore.

“The officer tested positive for the novel coronavirus last week and was on home isolation. She was hospitalised yesterday morning after she complained of breathing problems. She died today,” the official said.

COVID-19 cases are on the rise in West Bengal as the state not only recorded the highest single-day spike till date but also crossed the 10K mark in active cases now.

On Sunday, the West Bengal Health Department, in its daily health bulletin, reported 1,560 fresh COVID cases in the last 24 hours. The active cases in the state now stand at 10,500 with 30,013 total cases till date. On the same day, 26 more deaths were reported taking the COVID death toll to 932. While 622 patients were discharged, the discharge rate has fallen to 61.90% which a week ago on Monday, 6th July was at 66.27%. Samples tested in the last 24 hours were 11,709 across West Bengal.

Kolkata has reported 499 COVID deaths till 12th July.

 

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China now warns of this deadly disease more fatal than COVID-19

The Chinese embassy in Kazakhstan has issued a warning of deadly ‘unknown pneumonia’ after more than 600 people died of pneumonia in June, a report has said.

In an advisory issued for its citizens living in the former Soviet Bloc country, the Chinese embassy said the new disease has a fatality rate “much higher” than Covid-19.

Kazakhstan borders northwest China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.

The “unknown pneumonia” in Kazakhstan caused 1,772 deaths in the first six months of the year, including 628 people in June alone, including Chinese citizens, the embassy said in a statement.

On March 16, Kazakhstan announced a state of emergency to combat the spread of Covid-19.

While the lockdown was lifted on May 11, restrictions and quarantine measures were re-imposed in areas which witnessed a surge in pneumonia cases.

The Kazakhstan’s foreign ministry had summoned the Chinese ambassador in April to protest over an article on a Chinese website saying the country was keen to become part of China, the ministry said.

It was a rare move as the two countries avoid criticising each other.

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COVID UPDATE: PM to hold talks with CMs; Cases hit 300, 000 mark

Amid rising cases and speculations of lockdown again, reports say PM Narendra Modi will hold a video conference with all state Chief Ministers amid ‘Unlock 1’.The meeting will be held in two parts on June 16 and 17. The Prime Minister is scheduled to hold talks with CMs of 21 states / UTs on 16 June – Punjab, Assam, Kerala, Block, Uttarakhand, Chhattisgarh, Tripura, Himachal, Chandigarh, Goa, Manipur, Nagaland, Ladakh, Puducherry, Arunachal, Meghalaya Mizoram, A&N Islands, Dadra Nagar Haveli and Daman Diu, Sikkim and Lakshadweep.

The Prime Minister had previously held a meeting on May 11 with all state Chief Ministers to discuss an exit strategy for the nation as the deadline for the lockdown approached. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, Home Minister Amit Shah, Health Minister Dr. Harsh Vardhan, and some more ministers were present in the meeting.

Meanwhile, India became only the fourth country in the world — after the United States, Brazil and Russia — to report more than 300,000 cases of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) on Friday.

The country reported 11,172 new cases and 384 new deaths on Friday, taking the total number of cases to 309,324, and deaths to 8,882.

While the last 100,000 cases surfaced in only 10 days; the previous 100,000 cases took 15 days; and the first 100,000 cases took 78 days.

Amid all this, the health ministry claimed that the doubling time of coronavirus cases in India has improved to 17.4 days currently from 15.4 days a couple of weeks ago.

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How New Zealand defeated Coronavirus? Here’s what we an learn

New Zealand is now officially free of Corona virus. On June 8, the island country announced that its last person known to be infected with COVID-19 has recovered. Following the recovery of an Auckland woman on Monday, New Zealand has no known active cases of COVID-19. The death toll sits at 22. No one is in hospital.

The country has tallied 1,504 confirmed and probable infections and 22 deaths.

With this feat, New Zealand has joined the list of other countries like Fiji, Iceland, Taiwan and Montenegro, which have recently brought the number of active cases of COVID-19 to nearly zero.

Following the big development, high level talks are underway between the Queensland Government and New Zealand to open up a travel bubble from as early as next month. Air New Zealand is involved in the discussions, which could see flights operate between New Zealand, Brisbane, Cairns, the Sunshine Coast and the Gold Coast.

How New Zealand won the big battle?

New Zealand is a clear example that a combination of social distancing, testing and contact-tracing, and clear communication can have a huge impact on reining in the virus. The rest of the world battling the virus can certainly take a cue from New Zealand’s coordinated and aggressive response.

While part of the reason for New Zealand’s success lies in its small size, less population and isolated location, the fact that the government reacted swiftly after confirming its first case on February 28, is laudable.

New Zealand ramped up widespread diagnostic testing early, created a meticulous nationwide contact tracing system, called for a strict stay-at-home order, and closed its borders while the number of confirmed cases was still very low, Katz notes. As a result, it managed to avoid the explosive epidemics seen in other parts of the world.

The government of New Zealand also made an effort to unify people and make sure they understood what to expect when the country went into lockdown.

The elimination of COVID-19 in New Zealand highlights both the impact of proactive action against the disease and the importance of remaining vigilant against a virus that is likely to remain with us for many months yet.

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India faces labour shortage; companies woo them with healthcare, hostel facilities

As India proceeds with Unlock 1.0 to reopen the economy, the country is facing a labour shortage as migrant workers have left the cities for their hometowns.

According to reports, among sectors, construction and real estate face a 52 percent worker shortage, followed by manufacturing (44 percent) and pharmaceuticals (42 percent).

Talking about regions, heavily migrant dependent south India is struggling.

Even as Larsen and Toubro (L&T) is looking to re-start work at its construction sites with the easing of the lockdown, India’s largest engineering and construction firm is facing acute shortage of labour as over one lakh workers — almost half its labour — have gone to their homes in U.P., Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal and Orissa during the lockdown.

Talking about the crisis, S N Subrahmanyan, MD and CEO, L&T, told media, “We had 2.25 lakh labourers working with us pre-Covid; now we have 1.2 lakh people with us. We need to get back one lakh people to resume operations.”

“We expect most of the labourers to come back by the end of this month. Our project teams are tapping labourers returning to India from the Middle East due to job losses there,” he said.

Facing acute labour shortage, Indian companies are now setting up hostel and health facilities, and offering insurance cover to blue-collar workers at their plants/construction sites.

Some consumer products makers such as Dabur, Parle Products, and PepsiCo have turned to local people in the absence of migrant labourers. Dabur, for instance, has transportation service for workers to and from its 11 manufacturing sites. Housing has been provided for some workers near manufacturing plants.

Millions of workers in India were stranded in large cities following the lockdowns imposed by the government from late March onward. Many chose to walk home and have not been back to work.

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India and China would have more cases than US, if done more testing: Trump

Taking a dig at the testing strategies of other countries, US President Donald Trump on Friday said that the countries like India and China would have more coronavirus cases than America if they would have conducted more tests.

The US President while visiting to Puritan Medical Products medical swab manufacturing facility in Maine said that the US has so far carried out 20 million tests.

Comparing the US testing rate with other countries , Trump said that Germany has so far tested around 4 million samples whereas South Korea claimed to have done  around three million tests.

According to Johns Hopkins, the United States is the worst hit country with 18,97,838 cases with more than 1,08,000 deaths.

India has so far recorded 2.36 lakh cases with 6,642 deaths on Saturday. Meanwhile, China, where the virus first emerged late last year, has officially reported 83,030 cases with 4,634 casualties.

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COVID-19 cases: Another senior doctor criticizes Delhi govt action plan

In another such incident, one more senior doctor has openly criticized the Delhi government’s action plan to tackle the growing number of COVID-19 cases in the capital.

AmbarishSatwik, who as per his Twitter bio is a vascular surgeon, put out a detailed thread why instinctive testing as prescribed by doctors is necessary even if it lies outside the guidelines issued by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).

Satwik said that any unrelated surgery on an asymptomatic COVID-19 patient can be catastrophic, because research shows a high risk of pulmonary complication in COVID-19 patients who underwent surgery.

A doctor’s plea to allow unhindered testing has come up at a time when the Delhi government is locked in a row with RML Hospital over coronavirus testing, and is probing several private labs for testing asymptomatic patients.

Satwik also pointed out, “Hospitals are duty bound to prevent COVID-19 cross-infections as those sick enough to be admitted (for other conditions) in the middle of a pandemic constitute the most vulnerable cohort.”

Satwik also suggested that the ICMR guidelines being adhered to in stopping hospitals from testing may well be dated.

Prior to this, Dr Srinivas Rajkumar T. was the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) whistle-blower who told the media that the N95 masks provided by the hospital for its medical staff don’t meet the safety standards set by the health ministry. He has now been expelled from the Resident Doctors Association (RDA) and now faces disciplinary action from the hospital’s administration as well.

In another such incident, Dr Anoop Saraya, the head of the Department of Gastroenterology at the AIIMS, criticised the government’s policies and communication strategies to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, saying it was driven by clinicians and bureaucrats instead of epidemiologists and public health experts.