Home News Coronavirus live: Serum Institute of India, UNICEF enter into long-term supply for COVID-19 vaccines

Coronavirus live: Serum Institute of India, UNICEF enter into long-term supply for COVID-19 vaccines

Coronavirus live: Serum Institute of India, UNICEF enter into long-term supply for COVID-19 vaccines

Vaccine hesitancy in India is dropping significantly, according to a nation-wide survey, which found that the percentage of citizens willing to take the COVID-19 vaccine immediately has increased from 31% to 42% in a month.

The survey, which was conducted by the community social media platform LocalCircles, received 25,000 responses from residents of 289 districts. It found that vaccine hesitancy in India dropped by 16% within a month, though 58% still remained hesitant even as close to 5 million healthcare workers were vaccinated.

You can track coronavirus cases, deaths and testing rates at the national and State levels here. A list of State Helpline numbers is available as well.

Here are the latest updates:

China provides cooperation

WHO team in Wuhan says discussions open, meetings frank

One of the World Health Organisation investigators looking for clues into the origin of the coronavirus in the central Chinese city of Wuhan said that the Chinese side has provided a high level of cooperation.

In a tweet, zoologist and team member Peter Daszak praised Wednesday’s meetings with staff at the key Wuhan Institute of Virology, including with Deputy Director Shi Zhengli, a virologist who worked with Daszak to track down the origins of SARS that originated in China and led to the 2003 outbreak.

“Extremely important meeting today with staff at WIV including Dr Shi Zhengli. Frank, open discussion. Key questions asked & answered,” Daszak tweeted. The team remained at their hotel and appeared to have no field visits scheduled for Thursday. – PTI

 

Long-term supply for COVID-19 vaccines

Serum Institute of India, UNICEF enter into long-term supply for COVID-19 vaccines

The Serum Institute of India (SII) and UNICEF have entered into a long-term supply agreement for the AstraZeneca/Oxford and the Novavax vaccines, with the UN children’s agency saying it will have access to up to 1.1 billion doses of vaccines for around 100 countries.

India is one of the world’s biggest drugmakers, and an increasing number of countries have already approached it for procuring the coronavirus vaccines.

While Oxford-AstraZeneca’s Covishield is being manufactured by Pune-based Serum Institute, and the Novavax is being produced by US-based Novavax Inc. – PTI

 

Tracking home quarantined patients

IIT Mandi-led team develops AI app to track home quarantined COVID patients

A team led by researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Mandi has developed an artificial intelligence (AI) based biometric application to continuously monitor and accurately detect the identity of a home quarantined COVID-19 patient.

The mobile application, dubbed LakshmanRekha, uses a combination of biometric verification, geofencing and AI so that no patient can breach the assigned quarantine space.

Geofencing technology uses GPS signals to determine when a person enters a certain boundary.

“We have developed a pilot version of LakshmanRekha mobile application and tested it over small datasets,” Aditya Nigam, Associate Professor, School of Computing & Electrical Engineering, IIT Mandi, said.

“The obtained results are very good and now we are working to add more functionality, scalability and usability to make it ready for deployment,” Nigam said. – PTI

PIL for vaccination

Treat as representation PIL to include legal fraternity in phase-1 of COVID-19 vaccination: HC

The Delhi High Court on Thursday asked the Centre to treat as a representation a PIL seeking inclusion of judges, judicial staff and lawyers in the first phase of COVID-19 vaccination.

A bench of Chief Justice D.N. Patel and Justice Jyoti Singh said deciding priority for vaccination was a policy decision and the court was not going to change it.

“We see no reason to change the priority of the government for COVID-19 vaccination because it is a policy decision based on a variety of factors,” the bench said.

“Nonetheless, looking at facts and circumstances of the case, the petition be treated as a representation and the grievances in it be decided in accordance with the law, rules, regulations and government policy applicable to the facts of the case,” the court said. – PTI

Karnataka

Don’t lower guard: Karnataka Health officials after 49 nursing students test COVID positive

Health officials in Karnataka have appealed to people not to lower guard after 49 students from Kerala studying in a nursing college near the coastal city of Mangaluru tested positive for COVID-19.

“The news of 49 students testing positive in a nursing college in Ullal near Mangaluru is a grim reminder of how unpredictable the Covid virus is! Covid is still a threat, please continue to take necessary precautions”, Health and Medical Education Minister Sudhakar K tweeted on Thursday.

The Aaliyah Institute of Nursing in Dakshina Kannada district was sealed by authorities on Wednesday. – PTI

Karnataka

‘108’ ambulance staff not paid salary for two months

Over 3,000 staff members of 108 Arogya Kavacha ambulance service including 1,556 ambulance pilots (drivers) and 1,503 Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs) apart from call centre employees are finding it hard to make ends meet as they have not been paid salaries for the last two months.

While officials from GVK-EMRI, that runs the service for the State government, said that the salaries have been delayed as the government is yet to release funds, State health officials said as per the agreement with GVK it is the responsibility of GVK to pay salaries on time.

 

 

India to get 97 million vaccine doses from COVAX

India is likely to get nearly 97 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, nearly half of it by March end, under an agreement with the international COVAX facility. This is subject to the vaccine getting a pre-clearance from the World Health Organization (WHO) under a process called Emergency Use Listing.

The tranche to be made available to India will be manufactured and supplied by the Serum Institute of India. The latter has an agreement with Covax — a joint undertaking of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, Global Alliance for Vaccines (GAVI) and the WHO to ensure that at least 20% of the population in Low and Middle Income Countries are vaccinated over the year.

 

 

42% of people willing to take COVID-19 vaccine

A nation-wide survey found that the percentage of citizens willing to take the COVID-19 vaccine immediately has increased from 31% to 42% in a month, and 39% of those who were hesitant were willing to get vaccinated if senior government leaders and elected representatives got inoculated.

The survey, which was conducted by the community social media platform LocalCircles, received 25,000 responses from residents of 289 districts. It found that vaccine hesitancy in India dropped by 16% within a month, though 58% still remained hesitant even as close to 5 million healthcare workers were vaccinated.

 

This article is auto-generated by Algorithm Source: www.thehindu.com

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