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BENGALURU : While India joins 20 other countries in Europe, Asia and South America to ban flights from and via UK to prevent the spread of a new strain of SARS-CoV-2 from entering the country,
The New Indian Express looks at what this mutation means for India.
Virologists and genome researchers say viruses mutate all the time, and that while there is no need for panic, there is no room for complacency either. The warning from scientists and researchers at Britain about a distinct Phylognetic cluster of SARS-CoV-2 (dubbed lineage B 1.1.7) came at a point when India was waiting for approval from regulators for vaccines that are already in the market. Though the mutation is said to have caused havoc in the UK, we don’t have to panic, says Dr T Jacob John, virologist and former professor at Christian Medical College (CMC), Vellore.
The race to vaccinate the world against a once-in-a-century pandemic has begun in an all-too-familiar way: Every country for itself. Rich nations have gobbled up nearly all the global supply of the two leading Covid-19 vaccines through the end of 2021, leaving many middle-income countries to turn to unproven drugs developed by China and Russia while poorer states face long waits for their first doses.
JEWEL SAMAD/TNS
A health worker collects a swab sample for the Covid-19 testing at a makeshift testing booth in New Delhi, as India surged past 10 million cases. Richer countries will be able to vaccinate . their whole populations before vulnerable groups in many developing countries get covered, said Suerie Moon, co-director of the Global Health Centre at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva.
New Covid variant raises concern, but unlikely to impact vaccine development
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A number of European countries have banned flights from the UK as the British government warned that the potent new strain of the virus was out of control and imposed a stringent new stay-at-home lockdown from Sunday.
Health Ministry meeting today after spread of mutant coronavirus strain in UK
MUMBAI: A new variant of SARS-Cov2 virus found in the United Kingdom, which seems to be 70% quicker in spreading, has raised concerns in the scientific community about its likely impact on the efforts to bring the pandemic under control and whether vaccines will work against this variant.
Covid vaccination will help India get experience of mass adult immunisation: Srinath Reddy
K. Srinath Reddy, president, Public Health Foundation of India
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New Delhi: The government is in the process of deciding the platform through which the Covid-19 vaccines will be delivered, said Indu Bhushan, chief executive officer, Ayushman Bharat–Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (AB-PMJAY) and National Health Authority (NHA) on Monday. He was speaking at the Mint Budget 2021 LIVE panel discussion on How do we fund and distribute the Covid-19 vaccine?
When asked about the source of finances for the mass vaccination for Covid-19 in the country, Bhushan said that where money comes from is something that the finance ministry is looking at, but how it should be used is something the health experts are concerned about. “Virus doesn’t know boundaries or rural and urban distinction. Vaccination has to be done, all over the country and everyone in the c
Reading recommendations from a pandemic year
Poets and politicians, sportsmen and theatre personalities look back at 2020 through the books they read Updated: December 20, 2020 12:12:44 pm
Here are the books authors read this year. (Source: Getty Images)
Aruni Kashyap
writer
I think everyone in India should read Samit Basu’s Chosen Spirits (2020, Simon and Schuster) it is an urgent and topical book set in an India of the future, a work of speculative fiction. I don’t read a lot in this genre, but I think speculative fiction has the ability to
caution us.
I have long admired Moroccan-American writer Laila Lalami’s fiction but Conditional Citizens: On Belonging in America (2020, Pantheon) is my first introduction to her nonfiction writing. Through a set of essays, Lalami talks about what it means to be a Muslim-American citizen, a naturalised American citizen; and how acceptance by the establishment comes with some conditions. Read