The Divisional Commissioner of Agra, Anil Kumar has lost both his parents to Covid-19 in a span of two days. They were under treatment in a Noida hospital.

His father R. C. Meena and mother Vijay Laxmi were admitted to Noida’s J.P. Hospital for treatment. On August 5, in a random antigen test Anil Kumar’s father, mother and a sister, who is an IAS officer, were found Covid positive. When the health condition of the parents deteriorated in a private hospital in Agra, the two were shifted to the Noida hospital. Anil Kumar’s sister has recovered, but his parents succumbed to the disease. Kumar’s father died on Saturday and about 24 hours later, his mother also passed away.

Half a dozen officials of various state government departments are under treatment at different places in Agra. A few municipal corporation officials too reported positive on Monday. They have been home quarantined.

In the past 24 hours, Agra reported 33 fresh cases. Mathura reported 26 new cases with three deaths and Firozabad 15, including a senior doctor of the medical college. Mainpuri had nine new cases, Etah 45 and Kasganj 30, including several state government officials.

The total number of cases in Agra now is 2,552 with 107 deaths. So far 2,162 people have recovered. More than a lakh samples have been tested. The recovery rate stands at 84.07 percent.

Thousands of citizens and corporates contributed Rs 306 crore to the Karnataka Chief Minister’s Relief Fund for treating Covid-hit patients across the southern state, an official said on Tuesday.

“The state government’s appeal for liberal contributions to the relief fund received an overwhelming response from citizens and corporates across the state despite corona virus affecting their life and livelihood,” an official at the chief minister’s office told IANS here.

Of the Rs 306 crore donated to the fund from March 25 to July 23, 50 per cent of the corpus has been spent on Covid relief measures across the state as per the guidelines issued by the Union Ministry of Home Affairs and Union Health Ministry under the National Disaster Management Act.

“While contributions from individuals ranged from a modest Rs 100 to over Rs 1 lakh, corporates and cooperatives donated generously in lakhs of rupees, exemption from income tax notwithstanding,” said the official.

As the state-run hospitals did not have medical equipment and installed capacity to treat Covid patients in thousands at a time, the relief fund was used to ramp-up facilities and supplies in designated hospitals and primary health centres at the local body and district levels.

“As intensive care unit (ICU) beds were not in adequate numbers for treating patients in serious condition or requiring oxygen or ventilators, substantial amount of the fund was used in creating more ICUs and oxygen flow beds in cities and towns across the state,” noted the official.

Of the relief amount (Rs 153 crore) spent so far, Rs 109 crore was given to the state health department for additional facilities, capacity expansion and medical equipment supplies, Rs 44 crore to the state medical education department for resource mobilisation.

“Personal appeal by Chief Minister B.S. Yediyurappa soon after the pandemic broke in mid-March for contributions evoked good response from the people and institutions as Rs 127 crore was received by the relief fund between March 25 and April 9 during the first phase of the lockdown enforced to contain the virus spread,” the official pointed out.

Besides Yediyurappa donating his 1-year salary (Rs 24.10 lakh), 30 per cent salary of all state legislators and ministers, contributed Rs 15 crore to the fund.

In a major study, Australian researchers have identified mechanisms leading to the functional deterioration of the immune system in response to severe viral infections, such as HIV or Covid-19.

It is widely known that severe viral infections and cancer cause impairments to the immune system, including T cells, a process called immune ‘exhaustion’.

According to the study, published in the journal Nature Immunology, overcoming immune exhaustion is a major goal for the development of new therapies for cancer or severe viral infections.

“This is an exciting finding, particularly in the context of Covid-19 as one of the big questions is why some people get severely sick, while others experience mild disease,” said study author Daniel Utzschneider from the University of Melbourne in Australia.

For the findings, the research team focused on the question of when and how T cells lose their function and become ‘exhausted’.

It was previously thought that during severe infections, T cells lost their function slowly and over long periods of time.

This research, however, shows that T cells can be impaired within just a few days. It also identified several new mediators of immune exhaustion that may be targeted in new therapies.

“We looked at both mild and overwhelming Lymphocytic Choriomeningitis Virus infections in mice, which serves as a model for severe viral infections in humans, early after the onset of disease, and identified striking differences at the molecular and functional level,” Utzschneider said.

In response to overwhelming infections that are difficult to eliminate and may become chronic, the team was able to show that T cells down-regulate their function within days, while T cells responding to a weaker infection remained highly functional.

T cells are at the heart of immunotherapy for cancer. Therefore, understanding how a T cell function is impaired is central to improving these therapeutic approaches and applying them to other diseases, such as viral infections, they said.

“These findings are extremely exciting. Our data show that T cells could be manipulated during early stages of severe viral infection to improve their activity,” the study authors noted.