LEAD

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday (May 23, 2021) held a meeting with senior government officials and ministers to review the preparations for the approaching Cyclone Yaas. PM Modi directed senior officers to work in close co-ordination with states to ensure the safe evacuation of people from high-risk areas.

The meeting was also attended by Union Home Minister Amit Shah, along with senior government officials and representatives from the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), Secretaries from Telecom, Power, Civil aviation, Earth Sciences Ministries to review preparations against the approaching Cyclone Yaas.

New Delhi:  Two doses from either the Oxford-AstraZeneca or the Pfizer vaccine are over 80 per cent effective in preventing infection from the B1.617.2 variant of Covid-19, first discovered in India, a new UK government study has reportedly found. The Oxford-AstraZeneca two-dose vaccine is also being produced by the Serum Institute of India as Covishield and being administered among the adult population in India to protect against the deadly virus.

The UK findings are said to be based on data from Public Health England (PHE) and have also revealed that the two doses provide 87 per cent protection from the B.117 variant, first discovered in Kent region of England and also considered highly transmissible. According to The Telegraph' newspaper, the latest study's findings were presented to a meeting of the government's New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (Nervtag) this week. The latest PHE statistics released earlier this week show that case numbers of the B1.617.2 variant had risen by 2,111 over the past week to hit 3,424 cases across the country. "I think it's clearly growing, which anyone can see from the numbers as they are reported week by week, Dr Jeffrey Barrett, director of Covid-19 genomics at the Sanger Institute, told the BBC.

India’s Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) has developed a Covid-19 antibody detection kit. The DIPCOVAN kit can detect both spike as well as nucleocapsid proteins of Coronavirus with a high sensitivity of 97%. It has been approved by Indian Council of Medical Research, and has been developed by the Defence Institute of Physiology and Allied Sciences lab of DRDO in association with Delhi’s Vanguard Diagnostics Pvt Ltd.

“DIPCOVAN is intended for the qualitative detection of IgG antibodies in human serum or plasma, targeting SARS-CoV-2 related antigens. It offers a significantly faster turnaround time of just 75 minutes to conduct the test without any cross reactivity with other diseases. The kit has a shelf life of 18 months,” a statement released by DRDO said on Friday. 

The Delhi High Court Thursday warned the authorities that they should not take lightly the dip in COVID-19 cases in the national capital as there is a likelihood that the virus would again raise its ugly head and hit the citizens badly and reminded them about their responsibility to create buffer stock of liquid medical oxygen (LMO). The high court said it is the duty of the Centre and Delhi government to ensure that they are again not caught underprepared to deal with the situation.

If you have not taken steps, we will come and chase you again. We are telling you, we mean business. Please don’t take it lightly we are again warning you, a bench of Justices Vipin Sanghi and Jasmeet Singh told the Centre. While the high court was told by the Delhi government counsel that it has created a buffer stock of 419 Metric Tonnes (MT) of LMO at different locations here and they are making arrangements for creating further stock in next 10 days, it noted that the Centre has not disclosed in the status report as to what steps it has taken to fulfill its obligation in terms of the Supreme Court’s order.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi today announced an assistance of ₹ 1,000 crore for immediate relief work in Gujarat, which has been hit hard by Cyclone Tauktae.

The Prime Minister made the announcement after conducting an aerial survey of the affected areas in Gir Somnath, Amreli and Bhavnagar districts in Gujarat, and Diu.

He also announced compensation of ₹ 2 lakh each for the families of each of those who died in cyclone-related incidents across several states. A sum of ₹ 50,000 would be paid to those injured in such incidents.