India records 24K fresh Covid cases, 312 deaths

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India records 24K fresh Covid cases, 312 deaths

India on Thursday witnessed 24,712 fresh Covid-19 infections taking the total number of cases to 1,01,23,778, along with 312 deaths in the last 24 hours, taking the tally of fatalities to 1,46,756, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare said.

In the last 24 hours, 29,791 people have recovered. Currently, there are 2,83,849 active cases.

The recovery rate stands at 95.75 percent while the fatality rate is 1.45 percent.

Till now, 96,93,173 have recovered. A total of 16,53,08,366 samples have been tested for Covid-19 till now. Of these, 10,39,645 samples were tested on Wednesday, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) said.

Maharashtra continues to be the worst-hit state to date. Over 70 percent of the daily new cases are being reported by 10 states and union territory — Kerala, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Chhattisgarh, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, Delhi, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, and Madhya Pradesh.

Over 75 percent of the deaths are being reported from Maharashtra, West Bengal, Delhi, Kerala, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, and Haryana.

A new strain of the Covid-19 virus has appeared in the UK. The mutant is said to be 70 percent more aggressive, according to reports. Flights and other forms of transport to and from the UK are being shut down.

5-month pregnant woman finishes TCS World 10K Bengaluru in 62 minutes

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5-month pregnant woman finishes TCS World 10K Bengaluru in 62 minutes

One of many amazing stories of the TCS World 10K Bengaluru 2020 is a five-month pregnant woman completing the race in just 62 minutes.

Ankita Gaur, a mom-to-be, completed her run on Sunday, despite being five months pregnant.

The World 10K Bengaluru is an annual 10 km road running competition. The competition was first held in 2008. The World Athletics Gold Label Road Race is being held from December 20 to 27 via the TCSW10K App.

“This is something I have been doing for the past nine years, almost every day. You know, you wake up and go out for a run. Of course, there are times when you are injured or unwell, you have to take a step back. Otherwise, I have been running regularly for nine years, so this is something that is like breathing for me. It comes to me very naturally,” said Ankita as per a media release.

“Apparently, running is actually very safe. It’s a good exercise to run during pregnancy. Also, if you look at the American Council of Health, it is recommended that if you are a runner, it’s absolutely okay. In fact, they recommend you to run. It is very good for the development of the baby, so of course, I wanted to go,” she added on asked about her motivation behind taking part in the event despite her pregnancy.

An engineer by profession, Ankita has been running in TCS World 10K since 2013. She has also participated in over five international marathons, including in Berlin (three times), Boston, and New York.

When asked about her gynecologist’s reaction to her decision to participate in the race, Ankita said, “My doctor said it’s absolutely healthy. In fact, she encouraged me to go ahead and run. She advised me not to run fast. I don’t have any complications, so I was given a green signal to go ahead and do my running. Even my physiotherapist, who has been with me for the past three years, encouraged me to do a slow run because it’s really healthy for me, and the baby as well.”

When asked about her family’s reaction, she said, “Initially, my mother was a little unsure about it. But she has always encouraged me to continue with sports. So when I told her that the doctor had given the green signal, she was absolutely fine with it.”

“And my dad is super supportive, he is proud of me that I am still running, and he’s been a sportsperson himself, so he encouraged me. Moreover, my husband has also been absolutely supportive and has been with me all the time. Even when we went to ask the doctor, he was with me. Hence, I would say I am very lucky in that way,” she added.

“I thoroughly enjoyed the app-enabled race too. It was very user friendly, once you started the app, it calculated the elapsed time and showed you that as a result. Like how it happens in a real race,” she said.

On being asked how she prepared for this year’s event, Ankita said, “I have been doing easy running regularly for like 5-8 km, very slowly. I run and walk while taking breaks because obviously, now I am five months pregnant, so my body is very different compared to what it was. Earlier I won medals in TCS 10K, but this time I couldn’t as I had to take breaks and walk.”

Women suffering more than men due to Covid-19 isolation

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Women suffering more than men due to Covid-19 isolation

Women are suffering more than men with poorer sleep and more anxiety, depression, and trauma, while also feeling more empathetic than men during months of isolation due to Covid-19, says a new study.

The findings, published in Frontiers in Global Women’s Health, suggest sex and gender differences may play a role in psychological and behavioral reactions to the pandemic.

These differences need to be considered in planning targeted psychological interventions, the researchers said.

For the study, the researchers examined data from 573 participants, 112 men and 459 women with a mean age of 25.9 years, in Canada.

At the time of the online survey, schools and many businesses were closed, and people stayed home as much as possible as part of a general lockdown to prevent transmission of the virus.

More than 66 percent of the volunteer participants reported poor quality of sleep, more than 39 percent reported increased symptoms of insomnia, and anxiety and distress were increased in the whole sample.

Sleep, depression, and anxiety symptoms were more prevalent in women, said the study.

“Generally, the study found women reporting more anxiety and depression,” said lead researcher Veronica Guadagni from Cumming School of Medicine (CSM), University of Calgary, Canada.

“Their symptoms worsened over time and with greater length of the isolation period. There was a progressive increase in anxiety, depression, poor sleep quality, and trauma for males and females. But it was greater for females over time.”

The study also found that women reported higher scores on a scale measuring empathy, the ability to understand the emotions of others, and to care for others.

The greater empathy was, however, associated with greater anxiety, depression, and trauma.

The authors speculate women’s greater concern and anxiety in relation to being caregivers reflects differences in gender roles and norms.

India may get vax nod for emergency use by year-end; SII’s case strong

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India may get vax nod for emergency use by year-end; SII’s case strong

India is likely to have a Covid-19 vaccine approved for emergency use before December ends as Central Drugs Standard Control Organization’s (CDSCO) expert panel is set to review the applications of Serum Institute of India (SII) and Pfizer for the emergency use authorization (EUA) of their candidates, multiple sources associated with the development told IANS.

The sources said that the approval may come after the go-ahead from the Subject Expert Committee, which is likely to meet by the end of this week.

They also strongly indicated that the approval may come first for Adar Poonawalla’s SII vaccine c.

The sources said that the Pune-based SII’s vaccine candidate has an edge over Pfizer’s because of its low cost, effective logistics, and easy storage.

However, no official confirmation came from the CDSCO.

Pfizer and BioNTech’s mRNA-based coronavirus vaccine requires a minus 70 degrees Celsius temperature for long term storage while SII’s Covishield, developed from the master seed of Astrazeneca/Oxford University’s Covid vaccine — ChAdOx1 nCoV-2019, can be stored in the domestic fridge at a temperature not difficult to maintain (2 to 8 degrees Celsius).

IANS had reported on Tuesday that SII has submitted additional data required by the Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) for determining the safety and immunogenicity for Covishield.

If SII receives approval, then India could be the first country to give regulatory approval to AstraZeneca’s vaccine even as the medicine regulator of the UK, Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), continues to examine data from the trials.

The US pharma giant, Pfizer, whose vaccine has been authorized in the US, the UK, and Canada, has written to the DCGI seeking a fresh date to present its case for the EUA of their vaccine candidate BNT162b2 after it failed to present its data before the reviewing committee of CDSCO earlier.

A day ago, the European Commission (EC) granted Pfizer/BioNTech’s Covid-19 vaccine a conditional marketing authorization (CMA), under the new name Community.

Pfizer was the first to apply for the EUA in India on December 5, followed by Pune-based SII on December 6. Bharat Biotech sought EUA for its Covid vaccine, Covaxin, on December 7.

While Pfizer sought more time from the Subject Expert Committee (SEC) as its experts were busy and could not present their case on December 9, the SEC had asked SII and Bharat Biotech to furnish further safety and efficacy data in order to receive the EUA for their Covid vaccines.

The SEC had asked SII to submit an updated safety data of Phase 2 and 3 clinical trials in the country, immunogenicity (is the ability of a foreign substance, such as an antigen, to provoke an immune response in the body of a human or other animal) data from the clinical trial in the UK and India, along with the outcome of the assessment of the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) for grant of the EUA.

The SEC had asked SII to submit an updated safety data of Phase 2 and 3 clinical trials in the country, immunogenicity data from the clinical trial in the UK and India, along with the outcome of the assessment of the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) for grant of EUA.

Meanwhile, it has recommended Bharat Biotech to present the safety and efficacy data from the ongoing Phase 3 clinical trials in the country for further consideration.

For young people, Covid spells more threat for parents than themselves

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For young people, Covid spells more threat for parents than themselves

 During the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic, young people thought the deadly disease is a threat to their parents and the elderly but not to themselves, new research shows.

The young adults also felt that Covid falsehoods affected their parents and older relatives more than themselves.

Many of these instances of information sharing were facilitated by messaging apps, such as WhatsApp, said the researchers from Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

“An important consideration from these findings is how to make young people who think they are not prone to COVID-19 to be still engaging in proactive behaviors against the virus,” said Associate Professor Edson Tandoc Jr.

“Studying initial public reaction towards a health crisis like the Covid-19 pandemic could guide practitioners and social policymakers on how to handle the outbreak in the long term”.

This is even more important during the initial phase of the pandemic, where credible information about the new virus was scarce.

Young Singaporeans were more concerned about the dangers of fake news surrounding COVID-19 rather than the health threat posed by the disease and believed misinformation about the pandemic affected the older generation more than them.

To reach this conclusion, researchers involved eight focus group discussions with 89 participants aged 21 to 27.

Through the focus groups, the team found that rather than actively seeking information about COVID-19, many young adults got their news about the virus from social media platforms and messaging platforms such as WhatsApp.

This, in turn, shaped their view that the virus was risky for older generations but not for themselves, which in turn shaped their behavioral response to the outbreak, such as not wearing face masks, which was not mandated in the early stages of the outbreak.

“The results also document how making sense of what is happening in the early stages of a health crisis can go beyond the disease itself and focus more on social order and information quality, which can also shape behaviors,” the study authors noted in a paper published in the peer-reviewed academic journal New Media & Society.

Perceiving the virus as not a big threat to their age group, the participants said that they were more focused on combating the spread of misinformation.

“Fighting misinformation is particularly crucial in a time like this, when information flows quickly through channels like social media and messaging apps, to protect not just ourselves but also others in the community,” Tandoc Jr emphasized.

2 passengers from UK test Covid positive in Kolkata

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2 passengers from UK test Covid positive in Kolkata

Two passengers who returned from the UK to Kolkata have tested positive for Covid-19, West Bengal health officials confirmed on Tuesday.

The flight landed at Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport on Saturday night carrying 222 passengers of which 25 did not have their Covid-19 reports. They were taken to the nearest Covid testing center and two of them tested positive for coronavirus.

According to sources, one of them was admitted to the Calcutta Medical College and Hospital while the other was shifted to Rajarhat’s CMCI. Their test samples were sent to Pune for further verification to confirm if they were carrying the new strain of coronavirus.

A new strain of the coronavirus has emerged in the UK sparking off serious panic in many countries, including India. The new strain of COVID-19, codenamed B117, has been widely tracked in the UK recently.

Other passengers who returned in the same flight that night but tested negative for Covid-19 were told to report to the state health department if they developed any symptoms during self-isolation, sources said.

Govt committed to development without religious discrimination: PM

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Govt committed to development without religious discrimination: PM

Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Tuesday that his government was committed to ushering in development in the country without any discrimination on the basis of religion.

“I assure you that nobody will be left out and not discriminated against on religious lines. Everyone will move forward by enjoying the Fundamental Rights given in the Constitution,” Modi said while addressing through videoconference the centenary celebrations of the Aligarh Muslim University in Aligarh in Uttar Pradesh.

Modi is only the second Prime Minister to address an AMU function after Lal Bahadur Shastri 56 years ago.

The Prime Minister pointed out that during the nationwide lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic, the Union government did not discriminate against anyone and gave free food grains to 80 crore poor.

He said that the Union government had also got opened 40 crore bank accounts, given houses to 2 crore persons, and built toilets for 10 crore others under the ‘Clean India Mission’.

“Developmental issues should not be looked at from the political angle. The new India will shun the narrow political outlook,” Modi remarked.

Due to government policies, the dropout rate among Muslim women, which was 70 percent in the last many decades, had now dropped to only 30 percent due to an increase in the number of toilets constructed in educational institutions, he added.

During his speech, Modi recalled the AMU’s rich heritage of 100 years.

Modi quoted Sir Syed Ahmed Khan — who set up the Muhammadan-Anglo Oriental College that later became the AMU — that a person who loved his country will think of the welfare of the people without any prejudice.

He said that there may be ideological differences but the new India will offer a common ground to all, as was the case during the freedom struggle.

The Prime Minister congratulated the university for increasing the number of female students to 35 percent, adding that the government had provided 1 crore scholarships for such students.

Education leads to employment and entrepreneurship which in turn results in economic independence, he pointed out.

Modi said that during the pandemic, the AMU served the needy and even donated money in the PM-CARES fund to show their responsibility towards the nation.

Hailing the university for promoting diversity, the Prime Minister also said that it was one of the strengths of the country.

The AMU had helped India strengthen its relations with Muslim countries and nearly 1,000 foreign students were currently on its rolls. The Prime Minister said that the university should strengthen its soft power.

Modi said that the country was moving ahead after the ban on instant Triple Talaq.

The Prime Minister also released a postal stamp at the event, where University Chancellor Syedna Mufaddal Saifuddin and Union Education Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank were also present.

EU green-lights coronavirus vaccine

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EU green-lights coronavirus vaccine

The European Union (EU) has approved the usage of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine against the novel coronavirus within the bloc, hours after the European Medicines Agency (EMA) made a positive scientific assessment.

“We approved the first safe and effective vaccine against Covid-19. More vaccines will come soon. Doses of the vaccine approved today will be available for all EU countries, at the same time, on the same conditions,” Xinhua news agency quoted European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen as saying on Monday night.

Efforts have been made to enable the delivery of the first doses on December 26 so that vaccination can start on December 27, said an EU statement.

A total of 200 million doses were expected to be distributed by September 2021, with 100 million more optional.

Earlier on Monday, EMA chief Emer Cooke confirmed that the positive assessment was backed by robust scientific data based on more than 40,000 clinical trials.

The vaccine can be administered to people aged over 16.

The assessment and the following conditional marketing authorization came as news broke that a new strain of the coronavirus, which was found mainly in Britain, prompted countries to impose restrictions on flights to and from the UK.

Cooke said there was no evidence to suggest that the jab could not work against this new strain.

The Amsterdam-based agency had originally planned to meet on December 29 but brought the meeting forward as the need for a vaccine became more urgent because of a surge in the number of cases Europe-wide.

The urgency also emerged after both the UK and the US gave their approval to the same jab weeks ago.

According to the World Health Organization, 222 Covid-19 candidate vaccines were being developed worldwide currently, with 56 of them under clinical trials.

Alert in Uttar Pradesh over new Covid strain

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Alert in Uttar Pradesh over new Covid strain

The Uttar Pradesh government has sounded an alert in the state after reports of a new mutated strain of Coronavirus having emerged in the UK.

Additional chief secretary, information, Navneet Sehgal, has said that the government is monitoring the situation closely.

“Already, the government has stopped all flights from the UK as a precautionary measure, while the Uttar Pradesh government was also monitoring the situation. We appeal to the people not to let down their guard and continue to follow all safety protocols,” he said.

Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has directed officials to continue with aggressive testing, tracking, and treatment and said that there should be no laxity in ensuring safety protocols.

Additional chief secretary, health, Amit Mohan Prasad, meanwhile, said that the recovery rate of Covid-19 patients in the state has gone up to 95.65 percent.

The total casualty due to the virus so far is over 8,200.

He said that around 4.91 lakh health department teams have visited 1.76 lakh areas by reaching 3.05 crore houses and checking the health of over 14.92 crore people.

Avoiding hospital in pandemic increased heart disease deaths: Study

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Avoiding hospital in pandemic increased heart disease deaths: Study

Reduced hospital visits for urgent heart problems during the initial phase of the Covid-19 pandemic may have contributed to hundreds of avoidable deaths, new research has found.

In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, a marked decline in inpatient visits to emergency departments (EDs) was observed in England and the US, including for people with heart problems.

In this study, published online in the journal Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes, researchers at University College London’s Institute of Health Informatics estimated the effect of reduced emergency department visits for suspected cardiac disease on non-Covid-19 related cardiac mortality in England.

The researchers estimated that the excess cardiac mortality due to non-attendance at Emergency Departments, during the initial phase of the pandemic, may have been as high as 232 deaths per week.

To quantify the number of excess deaths due to cardiac disease, the team used mortality counts from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) for England.

To quantify the change in daily ED visits, researchers used data from the Public Health England (PHE) Emergency Department Syndromic Surveillance System (EDSSS): a network of sentinel EDs across England.

To explore how the reduction in ED visits may have affected cardiac mortality, researchers implemented causal inference methodology.

“During the initial phase of the pandemic, between March 12 and April 15, 2020, there was an estimated fewer ED visits of 2,750 per week for suspected cardiac disease; this is around a 35 percent decrease compared to the pre-pandemic period this year,” said lead study author Michail Katsoulis.

“Our analysis suggested that one cardiac death might have been prevented or delayed for every additional 12 ED visits for suspected cardiac conditions.”

March 12 was the day the UK’s Chief Medical Officer raised the risk to the UK from moderate to high and the government advised that anyone with a new continuous cough or a fever should self-isolate for seven days.

“Our results suggest that the pandemic response may have led to the undertreatment of non-Covid-19 diseases, including heart conditions, with important impacts on the excess mortality observed during this period,” said senior study author Tom Lumbers.

“These results provide evidence of the stark indirect effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on mortality in England.”

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