In all, the U.S. government has confirmed deals to buy 1.1 billion doses of a half-dozen vaccines in various stages of development, according to the Global Health Innovation Center at Duke University. The United States is expected to end up with far more doses than what is needed to vaccinate every American.
Other wealthy countries have bought an additional 2.9 billion doses in bilateral deals with drugmakers.
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Although there has never been such global demand for the same few drugs at the same time, pandemic nationalism is an old phenomenon.
A decade ago, during the swine flu outbreak that killed more than a quarter of a million people worldwide, the United States and other wealthy countries snatched up nearly all the available vaccine. They agreed to share a limited amount with poorer countries only after ensuring they had enough to meet their own needs.
Synopsis
The new variant of coronavirus circulating in the UK is unlikely to impact India’s vaccine strategy as the shots being developed are expected to be effective against the new strain and re-infections, in case they happen, would be milder, experts said.
AFP
(This story originally appeared in on Dec 22, 2020)NEW DELHI: The new variant of coronavirus circulating in the UK is unlikely to impact India’s vaccine strategy as the shots being developed are expected to be effective against the new strain and re-infections, in case they happen, would be milder, experts said.
They added that vaccine candidates under regulatory evaluation in India included shots with various other components apart from spike protein which is related to this particular strain and this would help the vaccines maintain their efficacy.
Representational photo.
NEW DELHI: Air pollution killed nearly 1.7 million people in India in 2019, accounting for an alarming 17.8% of all deaths in the country in the year, a new paper written as a collaborative effort by Indian institutions that include ICMR has said.
The economic loss due to lost output from premature deaths and disease caused by pollution last year was estimated at around Rs 2.6 lakh crore, nearly 1.4% of gross domestic product (GDP) with Delhi suffering the highest per capita loss, followed by Haryana. The health and economic losses are higher than previously estimated.
The study was conducted by the India State-Level Disease Burden Initiativs a collaborative effort involving over 300 researchers from institutions like ICMR, Public Health Foundation of India, Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation and others and assumes significance as it provides data from across different states for policy-makers. The findings show the per capita economic loss due t
Express News Service
NEW DELHI: Air pollution killed 1.7 million Indians, accounting for nearly 18% of total deaths in 2019, and resulted in an economic loss of Rs 2.6 lakh crore, nearly 1.4% of GDP, a comprehensive report of the disease burden attributable to air pollution and its economic impact has revealed.
The India State-level Disease Burden Initiative (ISLDBI) published in
The Lancet also showed that while the mortality from indoor air pollution reduced by 64% between 1990 and 2019, deaths from outdoor ambient air pollution increased by 115% during this period.
The ISLDBI was launched in 2015 as a collaborative effort between the ICMR, Public Health Foundation of India, Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, and a number of other stakeholders in India, including academic experts and institutions, government agencies, and other organizations, under the aegis of the Union ministry of health and family welfare.
Bollywood battles coronavirus
To make sero surveys done quickly, a new artificial intelligence (AI) based sero-survey technology developed by Indian IT firm, Thalamus Irwine will help the governments to identify vulnerable communities among the population whose immunization would halt the spread of the Covid-19 infection.
The sero-survey platform named Garuda, can give a map of the community and geographical pockets where least or no immunity has been developed against the COVID-19. Since the governments generally take months to conduct a sero-study with thousands of samples, the IT company claims that it could conduct sero-prevalence study of one crore samples within a week s time.