Junior Digest

New Delhi , September 1,2021: Union Minister of Ayush Sarbananda Sonowal and six other Union Ministers will launch the Y-Break mobile application at an event at Vigyan Bhawan on Wednesday as a part of Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav celebrations launched by the Central government to commemorate the 75th Year of Independence.
As per a statement released by the Ministry of Ayush, Sonawal along with Union Minister for Health and Family welfare Mansukh L Mandaviya, Union Minister of Law and Justice Kiren Rijiju, Union Minister of Information and Broadcasting Anurag Singh Thakur, MoS for Ministry of Science and Technology Jitendra Singh, Union Minister of Tourism and Culture Meenakshi Lekhi, and Minister of State for Ayush Dr Munjpara Mahendrabhai Kalubhai will launch the app.
The five minutes ‘Yoga Break Protocol’ consists of very useful yoga practices devised to de-stress, refresh and re-focus on work to increase the productivity of individuals at the workplace. The concept of “Yoga Break” (Y-Break) is relevant to working professionals across the world. It has been carefully developed by eminent experts under a tested protocol. The protocol consists of few simple yoga practices like deep breathing and meditation.

Aug 1,2021: Provinces across China have imposed tougher restrictions in an effort to racing to contain the country’s worst coronavirus outbreak in months, with health officials attributing the surge in COVID-19 infections to the highly contagious Delta variant.

Authorities reported 328 symptomatic infections in July – almost equal to the total number of local cases from February to June.

“The main strain circulating at present is the Delta variant … which poses an even greater challenge to virus prevention and control work,” Mi Feng, spokesman for the National Health Commission (NHC), said at a news briefing on Saturday.

It came a day after the World Health Organization (WHO) urged governments globally to contain Delta before it turns into something deadlier and draws out the pandemic.

The WHO said an 80 percent average increase in COVID-19 cases was recorded over the past four weeks in five of the health agency’s six regions, a jump largely fuelled by the fast-spreading Delta variant.

First detected in India, the strain has now reached 132 countries and territories.

“Delta is a warning: it’s a warning that the virus is evolving but it is also a call to action that we need to move now before more dangerous variants emerge,” the WHO’s emergencies director Michael Ryan told a news conference.

According to a leaked document by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States, a review of findings from other countries showed that while the original SARS-CoV-2 was as contagious as the common cold, each person with Delta infects on average eight others, making it as transmissible as chickenpox but still less than measles.

Washington [US], August 22,2021: A recent study by University of Michigan scientists evaluated more than 5,800 foods, ranking them by their nutritional disease burden to humans and their impact on the environment. They found that small changes in the diet could be a step towards a healthier, sustainable life.
Eating a hot dog could cost you 36 minutes of a healthy life, while choosing to eat a serving of nuts instead could help you gain 26 minutes of an extra healthy life, according to the study, published in the journal Nature Food.
It found that substituting 10 per cent of daily caloric intake from beef and processed meats for a mix of fruits, vegetables, nuts, legumes, and select seafood could reduce your dietary carbon footprint by one-third and allow people to gain 48 minutes of healthy minutes per day.
“Generally, dietary recommendations lack specific and actionable direction to motivate people to change their behaviour, and rarely do dietary recommendations address environmental impacts,” said Katerina Stylianou, who did the research as a doctoral candidate and postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at U-M’s School of Public Health.
She currently works as the Director of Public Health Information and Data Strategy at the Detroit Health Department.
This work is based on a new epidemiology-based nutritional index, the Health Nutritional Index, which the investigators developed in collaboration with nutritionist Victor Fulgoni III from Nutrition Impact LLC. HENI calculates the net beneficial or detrimental health burden in minutes of healthy life associated with a serving of food consumed.
The index is an adaptation of the Global Burden of Disease in which disease mortality and morbidity are associated with a single food choice of an individual. For HENI, researchers used 15 dietary risk factors and disease burden estimates from the GBD and combined them with the nutrition profiles of foods consumed in the United States, based on the What We Eat in America database of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.
Foods with positive scores add healthy minutes of life, while foods with negative scores are associated with health outcomes that can be detrimental to human health.
To evaluate the environmental impact of foods, the researcher’s utilized IMPACT World+, a method to assess the life cycle impact of foods (production, processing, manufacturing, preparation/cooking, consumption, waste), and added improved assessments for water use and human health damages from fine particulate matter formation.

They developed scores for 18 environmental indicators taking into account detailed food recipes as well as anticipated food waste.
Finally, researchers classified foods into three colour zones: green, yellow and red, based on their combined nutritional and environmental performances, much like a traffic light.
The green zone represents foods that are recommended to increase in one’s diet and contains foods that are both nutritionally beneficial and have low environmental impacts. Foods in this zone are predominantly nuts, fruits, field-grown vegetables, legumes, whole grains, and some seafood.
The red zone includes foods that have either considerable nutritional or environmental impacts and should be reduced or avoided in one’s diet. Nutritional impacts were primarily driven by processed meats, and climate and most other environmental impacts were driven by beef and pork, lamb, and processed meats.
The researchers acknowledge that the range of all indicators varies substantially and also point out that nutritionally beneficial foods might not always generate the lowest environmental impacts and vice versa.
“Previous studies have often reduced their findings to a plant vs. animal-based foods discussion,” Stylianou said. “Although we find that plant-based foods generally perform better, there are considerable variations within both plant-based and animal-based foods.”
Based on their findings, the researchers suggest:
1. Decreasing foods with the most negative health and environmental impacts including high processed meat, beef, shrimp, followed by pork, lamb, and greenhouse-grown vegetables.
2. Increasing the most nutritionally beneficial foods, including field-grown fruits and vegetables, legumes, nuts, and low-environmental impact seafood.
“The urgency of dietary changes to improve human health and the environment is clear,” said Olivier Jolliet, U-M professor of environmental health science and senior author of the paper. “Our findings demonstrate that small targeted substitutions offer a feasible and powerful strategy to achieve significant health and environmental benefits without requiring dramatic dietary shifts.”
The project was carried out within the frame of an unrestricted grant from the National Dairy Council and of the University of Michigan Dow Sustainability Fellowship. The researchers are also working with partners in Switzerland, Brazil, and Singapore to develop similar evaluation systems there. Eventually, they would like to expand it to countries all around the world.

Aug 5,2021: Coronavirus cases worldwide surpassed 200 million on Wednesday, according to a Reuters tally, as the more-infectious Delta variant threatens areas with low vaccination rates and strains healthcare systems.

The global surge in cases is highlighting the widening gap in inoculation rates between wealthy and poor nations. Cases are rising in about one-third of the world’s countries, many of which have not even given half their population a first dose.

The World Health Organization (WHO) on Wednesday called for a moratorium on COVID-19 vaccine boosters until at least 10% of the population in every country was vaccinated.

“We need an urgent reversal, from the majority of vaccines going to high-income countries, to the majority going to low-income countries,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.

The Delta variant is upending all assumptions about the virus and roiling economies, with disease experts scrambling to find whether the latest version of coronavirus is making people, especially unvaccinated individuals, sicker than before.

At least 2.6% of the world’s population has been infected since the pandemic started, with the true figure likely higher due to limited testing in many places. If the number of infected people were a country, it would be eighth most populous in the world, behind Nigeria, according to a Reuters analysis.

It took over a year for COVID-19 cases to hit 100 million mark, while the next 100 million were reported in just over six months, according to the analysis. The pandemic has left close to 4.4 million people dead.

The countries reporting the most cases on a seven-day average – the United States, Brazil, Indonesia, India and Iran – represent about 38% of all global cases reported each day.

The United States accounts for one in every seven infections reported worldwide. U.S. states with low vaccination rates such as Florida and Louisiana are seeing record numbers of COVID patients hospitalized, despite the nation giving 70% of adults at least one vaccine shot. The head of one Louisiana hospital warned of the “darkest days” yet.

Unvaccinated people represent nearly 97% of severe cases, according to the White House COVID-19 Response Team.
Reuters Image

RISING CASES IN ASIA

Countries in Southeast Asia are also reporting rising cases. With just 8% of the world’s population, the region is reporting almost 15% of all global cases each day, according to a Reuters analysis.

Indonesia, which faced an exponential surge in COVID-19 cases in July, is reporting the most deaths on average and surpassed 100,000 total deaths on Wednesday. The country accounts for one in every five deaths reported worldwide each day. The Southeast Asian nation aims to gradually reopen its economy in September, Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin said on Monday, citing that the wave of infections had passed its peak, with daily confirmed cases on the decline.

After suffering its worst outbreak in April-May, India is once again seeing a rising trend of cases. Last Friday, the country reported 44,230 new COVID-19 cases, the most in three weeks, fuelling worries of a third wave of infections that has forced one state to lockdown.

China’s Wuhan city, where the virus first emerged in late 2019, will test its 12 million residents for the coronavirus after confirming its first domestic cases of the Delta variant. The city had reported no local cases since mid-May last year.

The variant, first detected in India, is as contagious as chickenpox and spreads far more easily than the common cold or flu, the CDC said in an internal document.

A key issue, said Dr. Gregory Poland, a vaccine scientist at the Mayo Clinic, is that the current vaccines block disease, but they do not block infection by keeping the virus from replicating in the nose.

As a result, he said, “the vaccines we have currently are not going to be the be-all, end-all,” he said. “We are now in a scenario of our own making, where this is going to be years to decades to now defeat. … And we’re going to chase our tail with variants until we get a type of vaccine that offers infection and disease-blocking capabilities.”

Washington , August 6,2021: A new study has shed light on the dual beneficial effect of physical activity for people with depression. The study suggested that exercising not only reduces depressive symptoms but also increases the brain’s ability to change, which is necessary for adaptation and learning processes.
The findings of the study were published in the journal ‘Frontiers in Psychiatry’.
“The results show how important seemingly simple things like physical activity are in treating and preventing illnesses such as depression,” said study leader associate professor Dr Karin Rosenkranz.
Exercise programme promotes motivation and togetherness
People with depression often withdraw and are physically inactive. To investigate the effect of physical activity, Karin Rosenkranz’s working group enlisted 41 people, who were undergoing treatment at the hospital, for the study.
The participants were each assigned to one of two groups, one of which completed a three-week exercise programme. The programme, which was developed by the sports science team from the University of Bielefeld led by Professor Thomas Schack, was varied, contained fun elements, and did not take the form of a competition or test, but instead required teamwork from the participants.
“This specifically promoted motivation and social togetherness while breaking down a fear of challenges and negative experiences with physical activity – such as school PE lessons,” explained Karin Rosenkranz. The other group took part in a control programme without physical activity.

The study team ascertained the severity of the depressive symptoms, such as a loss of drive and interest, lack of motivation and negative feelings, both before and after the programme. The brain’s ability to change, known as neuroplasticity, was also measured. It can be determined externally with the help of transcranial magnetic stimulation.
“The ability to change is important for all of the brain’s learning and adaptation processes,” explained Karin Rosenkranz.
Ability to change increased – symptoms decreased
The results show that the brain’s ability to change is lower in people with depression than in healthy people. Following the programme with physical activity, this ability to change increased significantly and achieved the same values as healthy people. At the same time, depressive symptoms decreased in the group.
“The more the ability to change increased, the more clearly the clinical symptoms decreased,” summarised Karin Rosenkranz.
These changes were not so pronounced in the group who took part in the control programme.
“This shows that physical activity has an effect on symptoms and the brain’s ability to change. We cannot say to what extent the change in symptoms and the brain’s ability to change are causally linked based on this data,” said the doctor, referring to the limitations.
“It is known that physical activity does the brain good, as it, for instance, promotes the formation of neuron connections. This could certainly also play a role here,” concluded the doctor.

Aug 21,2021:India’s drug regulator has granted emergency use approval for Zydus Cadila’s COVID-19 vaccine, the world’s first DNA shot against the coronavirus, in adults and children aged 12 years and above.

The approval gives a boost to India’s vaccination programme, which aims to inoculate all eligible adults by December, and will provide the first shot for those below 18, as the country still struggles to contain the virus spread in some states.

The vaccine, ZyCoV-D, uses a section of genetic material from the virus that gives instructions as either DNA or RNA to make the specific protein that the immune system recognises and responds to.

Unlike most COVID-19 vaccines, which need two doses or even a single dose, ZyCoV-D is administered in three doses.

The generic drugmaker, listed as Cadila Healthcare Ltd, aims to make 100 million to 120 million doses of ZyCoV-D annually and has already begun stockpiling the vaccine.

Zydus Cadila’s vaccine, developed in partnership with the Department of Biotechnology, is the second home-grown shot to get emergency authorisation in India after Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin.

The drugmaker said in July its COVID-19 vaccine was effective against the new coronavirus mutants, especially the Delta variant, and that the shot is administered using a needle-free applicator as opposed to traditional syringes.

The regulatory nod makes ZyCoV-D the sixth vaccine authorised for use in the country where only about 9.18 percent of the entire population has been fully vaccinated so far, according to Johns Hopkins University data.

Zydus Cadila had also submitted data evaluating a two-dose regimen for the shot in July and plans to seek regulatory approval for the same.

The firm had applied for the authorisation of ZyCoV-D on July 1, based on an efficacy rate of 66.6 percent in a late-stage trial of more than 28,000 volunteers nationwide.

Aug 7,2021:Public health experts warn that ‘vaccines do not eliminate all risk’ amid early signs jabs may not stop Delta transmission.

Hundreds of fully vaccinated people in England have been hospitalised with the highly contagious Delta coronavirus variant, scientists said on Friday.

In its latest COVID-19 update, Public Health England (PHE) also warned there were early signs that people who have been inoculated may be able to transmit the Delta strain as easily as those who have not received any jabs.

From July 19 to August 2, 55.1 percent of the 1,467 people hospitalised with the Delta variant were unvaccinated, PHE said, while 34.9 percent – or 512 people – had received two doses.

Dubbed “freedom day”, July 19 was the date England significantly eased lockdown restrictions.

All vaccines in use in the United Kingdom – those produced by AstraZeneca, Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech – require recipients to receive two doses to be fully inoculated.

About 75 percent of the UK’s adult population has received two shots to date.

“As more of the population gets vaccinated, we will see a higher relative percentage of vaccinated people in hospital,” PHE said.

Jenny Harries, chief executive of the UK Health Security Agency, said the hospitalisation figures showed “once again how important it is that we all come forward to receive both doses of the vaccine as soon as we are able to do so”.

“Vaccination is the best tool we have in keeping ourselves and our loved ones safe from the serious disease risk COVID-19 can pose,” Harries said in a statement.

“However, we must also remember that the vaccines do not eliminate all risk: it is still possible to become unwell with COVID-19 and infect others.”
Dominant strain

PHE’s findings chime with those from the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which last week raised concerns that vaccinated people infected with Delta could, unlike with other variants, readily transmit it.

Vaccines have been shown to provide good protection against severe disease and death from Delta, especially with two doses, but there is less data on whether vaccinated people can still transmit it to others.
The Delta variant has become the dominant form of coronavirus circulating globally, sustaining a pandemic that has already killed more than 4.4 million people, including more than 130,000 in the UK.

New Delhi, Aug 4,2021: The gap between the emphasis placed on Intellectual Property Rights by the pharma industry and the meeting of public health goals in the time of Covid-19 will only delay the elimination of the pandemic by several years, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said on Tuesday, terming it “simply not acceptable”.

Addressing the inaugural session of the BRICS Academic Forum, Jaishankar said that that beyond the health aspect there is a larger economic lesson for the world to learn from the pandemic, and that is the need to create more reliable and resilient supply chains to infuse greater confidence in the global economy and to de-risk it from future pandemics.

“Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s call for a human-centric globalisation was not just a recognition of pandemic-induced distortions, but in fact of broader inequities. Welfare and well-being of people, families and communities cannot be divorced from the global reset and resilience that is occurring in the long tail of Covid-19,” he said in his address to the Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa (BRICS) Academic Forum in the runup to the leaders summit later.

“A case in point is the imbalance between the emphasis on IPR in the pharmaceutical industry and the meeting of public health goals. Left untouched, the current practices will only delay the elimination of the pandemic by several years. This is simply not acceptable,” he said.

His reference was to the large-scale objection raised by pharma majors to the request by India and South Africa to the World Trade Organization to waive Intellectual Property Rights for Covid-19 vaccines, treatments, diagnostics and technology.

The Biden administration in May this year announced that it would support a temporary waiver of IP provisions in the hope it would allow developing nations to produce their own Covid vaccines developed by pharmaceutical companies.

Under WTO rules, the organisation can invoke a waiver of certain IP rights on technologies that could help combat an exceptional global crisis, such as the Covid-19 pandemic. India and South Africa had on October 16 last year presented a proposal to the WTO Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Council to allow its members to waive four categories of IP rights – copyright, industrial designs, patents and undisclosed information – under the Agreement of TRIPS until the majority of the world population receives effective vaccines and develops immunity to Covid-19.

Jaishankar, in his address, called for diversification of investments “to provide a certain assurance of sustainability – for livelihoods, for families and communities, and of course for the natural environment”.

He said that the past years “has made more of us alive to the limitations of an economic model that posits efficiency and pricing as antithetical to people and community or indeed to livelihoods and sustainability”.

He said emerging technologies, especially digital technology and the Internet, while they can become an instrument for sources of extremism and motivated misinformation, have proved invaluable for India in pushing back the pandemic.

“In the year-and-a-half of living and coping with the Covid-19, they have accelerated contact tracing, vaccine delivery, online and mobile-based diagnosis; and targeted delivery of welfare. India’s 800/400 accomplishment i.e. food rations for 800 million people and cash transfers to 400 million – has been streamlined by digitally-enabled technology. The surge in online education has also been noteworthy,” he said.

He said while the pandemic has “demanded a price in terms of economic growth and has challenged SDG timelines”, technology could “help us now recover ground and time”.

“India is optimistic on this score, and ready to share what it has harnessed, innovated and learnt in these last years,” Jaishankar said.

Stating that “BRICS is a statement of global rebalancing that underlines its essential diversity and pluralism”, Jaishankar said that “updating and recalibration of the post-World War II multilateral architecture cannot be postponed any further”.

“The pandemic and the normative breakdown in its wake have rudely reminded us that institutions built to tackle problems of the 1940s desperately need to be upgraded and made fit-for-purpose for our century.”

“An expansion of the permanent membership of the Security Council is a necessary ingredient. But by itself it is not sufficient. Multilateral institutions have been disadvantaged by structural inertia, competitive gridlocks, uneven resourcing and skewed navigation. The proliferation of new and smaller platforms, including of plurilateral and regional groups, is therefore a response to such felt gaps. BRICS itself was actually among the earliest in this regard. Too often, we obsess with one or the other response; more effort and action is actually required to fill the gaps,” he said.

He said that “Terrorism thrives in some of these gaps. Its nursery lies in conflict-ridden spaces made fertile for radicalisation by malign players, including states. The transition in Afghanistan that we are seeing today and the warfare that has yet again been forced upon its people has sharpened this challenge. Left unattended, its edge will be deeply felt not just in Afghanistan’s neighbourhood but well beyond.

“We are therefore all stakeholders in the quest for a clear, coordinated and undifferentiated response to terrorism. In the 21st century, legitimacy cannot be derived from mass violence, brutal intimidation or covert agendas. Representation, inclusion, peace and stability are inextricably linked,” he stated.

Jul 30,2021: The Delta variant of the corona virus is as contagious as chickenpox and could cause severe illness, according to an internal document at the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), The New York Times reported.

The variant was also more likely to break through protections afforded by the vaccines, the report said, adding that CDC’s decision to reverse course on masking guidelines for fully vaccinated citizens on Tuesday is based on the document.

The agency had previously said the vaccinated did not need to wear masks indoors.

Still, the CDC’s figures show that the vaccines are highly effective in preventing serious illness, hospitalisation and death in vaccinated people, according to experts quoted by the newspaper.

The Delta variant is more transmissible than the viruses that cause MERS, SARS, Ebola, the common cold, the seasonal flu and smallpox, the report said.

The immediate next step for the agency is to “acknowledge the war has changed”, the report cited the document as saying before adding that the CDC is expected to publish additional data on the variant on Friday.

CDC Director Rochelle Walensky told the Times that new research showed the vaccinated people infected with the Delta variant carried tremendous amounts of the virus in the nose and throat.

Officials have warned of rising COVID-19 infections in the US, particularly among about half of the population that remains unvaccinated, despite a successful rollout that has seen an excess stock of the inoculant.

The vaccine hesitancy among large swaths of the country, fuelled largely by misinformation, has scuttled the government’s hopes of controlling the virus within months of the vaccine being approved for emergency use.

Washington has resorted to increasingly blunt methods to encourage the remaining citizens to be vaccinated, including requiring federal employees to get the jab or be subject to mandatory testing and other restrictions.

Moscow, Jul 18,2021: About 114,000 people participated in protests held across France against coronavirus vaccination and fresh safety measures, BFMTV reports.

The demonstrations were held in Paris, where about 18,000 people gathered on Saturday, as well as in other parts of France. The regional protests attracted a total of 96,000, according to BFMTV.

On Friday, nine demonstrators were detained in Lyon amid protests against COVID-19 passes.

On Monday, French President Emmanuel Macron announced that a health pass, certifying that the bearer has either been fully vaccinated or had a recent, negative COVID-19 test result, would become mandatory in France starting from August for those visiting bars, restaurants, shopping malls, as well as when boarding a train or plane. Starting from July 21, such a pass will be required to attend cultural events, festivals, amusement parks and various shows and performances.

Concerns have been mounting in France over the Beta variant, as well as the continuing spread of the Delta variant. The country has confirmed a total of over 5.9 million COVID-19 cases since the start of the pandemic and France’s coronavirus death toll stands at over 111,000.

Beijing, Jul 22,2021: China regards the World Health Organization’s (WHO) criteria for the second phase of the investigation into origins of the coronavirus as insulting and will not follow them, the National Health Commission said on Thursday.

“Concerning the proposal on the second phase of the investigation, it uses some formulations, which are not respecting science and common sense. We will not follow this plan. The Chinese government supports an investigation based on the scientific approach. We are against the politicization of the probe into the virus origins,” Vice Minister of Health Zeng Yixin said at a press conference.

Jul 19,2021:The British government on Monday lifted all pandemic restrictions in England – including rules on mask wearing and social distancing – despite scientists’ warnings that the move will further fuel an already surging pandemic and risk creating new variants.

The curbs were lifted at midnight (23:00 GMT) on Sunday as laws mandating face masks and working form home were scrapped. The lifting of the rules means nightclubs were also able to reopen for the first time since the UK first went into lockdown in March last year. Other indoor venues such as theatres and cinemas will also be able to operate at full capacity.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who is in isolation after health minister Sajid Javid tested positive for COVID-19, urged people to remain cautious. His government is hoping that the UK’s rollout of coronavirus vaccines will help protect the country even as infections surge to levels last seen in January.

“If we don’t do it now we’ve got to ask ourselves, when will we ever do it?” Johnson said in a video message filmed on Sunday.

“This is the right moment but we’ve got to do it cautiously. We’ve got to remember that this virus is sadly still out there.”

If the vaccines continue to prove effective in reducing severe illness and deaths even with infections at record levels, Johnson’s decision could inform other highly vaccinated countries’ approach to returning to normal.

But the strategy comes with risks – most notably that a variant capable of resisting vaccines could emerge, or that the caseload could overwhelm the health system and bring the country to a halt.

Leading international scientists on Friday described what some have called England’s “Freedom Day” as a threat to the whole world, and 1,200 scientists gave their backing to a letter to the prominent British medical journal, The Lancet, criticising the Conservative government’s decision.

London [UK] July 28,2021: Economic prospects between rich and poor countries have had an even bigger gap due to different approaches to the COVID-19 vaccine, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said.
In a new assessment of the global outlook, the IMF stated that the world is increasingly divided into two blocs.
It has improved growth forecasts for developed economies for this year, including Britain, but forecasts for many developing countries are weaker than expected, reports the BBC.

The IMF states that there is a division between those countries “that can hope for further normalization of activities later this year (almost all advanced economies) and those that will continue to face recurrent infections and an increasing number of deaths from COVID-19”.
The report states that in rich countries, almost 40 percent of the population is fully vaccinated. In emerging market economies (more advanced developing countries) this is less than half and only a “small fraction” in low-income countries.
For rich countries combined, growth is projected at half a percentage point this year. But for the rest of the world, there is a compensatory decline, leaving the global forecast for 2021 unchanged at six percent. An upgrade to 4.9 percent follows next year.
However, the IMF warns that even in countries with a very low level of COVID-19 infection, economic recovery is not ensured as long as the virus is circulating in other countries.

New Delhi [India], August 10,2021: New COVID-19 mutants can reach anywhere at any time, said the Central government on Tuesday, adding that it is monitoring Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta and Delta Plus variants.
Addressing media on the COVID-19 situation, National Centre for Disease Control Director Dr SK Singh said, “The variants of concern that we monitor are Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and Delta Plus. There are two variants under investigation – Kappa and B1617.3.”
“We were doing two kinds of surveillance – to monitor variants of concern (coming from outside) and to monitor the impact of the Delta variant in the country. Today, we need to look for new mutants because they can reach anywhere any time,” he added.
He further explained that the World Health Organization (WHO) came out with a strategy that the sentinel sites need to be identified and representative samples from every district of every state be subjected to genome sequencing.
“WHO came out with a strategy that the sentinel sites need to be identified and representative samples from every district of every state be subjected to genome sequencing. It should be tested if there is any mutant that will cause a public impact in the time to come,” said Singh.
“Sentinel sites were affixed across the country and all states were asked to identify a minimum of 5 labs and 5 tertiary care hospitals and see if the sentinel sites represented samples of a representative district. Around 277 sentinel sites have been identified while 8,000 samples have been sent in July,” he added.
Further speaking about Kerala’s Covid situation, Singh said, “Central Team was sent to Kerala. First, to see how the ‘test-track-treat’ strategy is being implemented, second, surveillance of containment zones with contact tracing being an important factor, the third infrastructure of hospitals and fourth progress of vaccination.”
“The caseload and positivity trend was found to be more than 10. Some districts indicated an increasing trend of positivity rate – Malappuram, Kozhikode, Pathanamthitta. 80 per cent of cases were found to be positive for Delta variant, like other states,” he added.

Jaipur (Rajasthan), July 14,2021: Eleven cases of Kappa variant of COVID-19 have been detected in Rajasthan, said State Health Minister Raghu Sharma on Tuesday.

Addressing a press briefing last week, Dr VK Paul, Member-Health, NITI Aayog had said that the Kappa variant of COVID-19 is a “variant of interest” and it is not a new variant as cases have been reported in the country before.
He further informed that Kappa variant is of much less intensity and was earlier reported in February and March.
“If cases are detected, this means that the variant has stayed in the country. Kappa is much less in its intensity. Our watch will continue. Kappa variant was earlier reported in February and March also,” said Dr Paul.

Aug 5,2021:The World Health Organization is calling for a halt on COVID-19 vaccine boosters until at least the end of September, its head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Wednesday, as the gap between vaccinations in wealthy and poor countries widens.

The call for a moratorium is the strongest statement yet from the UN agency at a time when countries deliberate the need for boosters to combat the fast-spreading Delta variant of the coronavirus.

“I understand the concern of all governments to protect their people from the Delta variant. But we cannot accept countries that have already used most of the global supply of vaccines using even more of it,” Tedros added.

High-income countries administered around 50 doses for every 100 people in May, and that number has since doubled, according to WHO. Low-income countries have only been able to administer 1.5 doses for every 100 people, due to lack of supply.
“We need an urgent reversal from the majority of vaccines going to high-income countries to the majority going to low-income countries,” Tedros said.

To counter the spread of the Delta variant, some countries have begun to use or started weighing on the need for booster doses even as scientists debate over whether or not extra shots are needed.

“The fact that we are vaccinating healthy adults with a booster dose of COVID-19 vaccines is a short-sighted way of thinking,” said Elin Hoffmann Dahl, infectious diseases medical adviser to Medecins Sans Frontieres’ access campaign.

“With the emergence of new variants, if we continue to leave the majority of the world unvaccinated, we will most definitely need adjusted vaccines in the future,” Dahl told Reuters.

Last week, Israeli President Isaac Herzog received a third shot of coronavirus vaccine, kicking off a campaign to give booster doses to people aged over 60 in the country.

The United States in July signed a deal with Pfizer Inc and German partner BioNTech to buy 200 million additional doses of their COVID-19 vaccine to help with pediatric vaccination as well as possible booster shots.

U.S. health regulators were still assessing the need for a booster dose.

Jul 14,2021: Australian scientists say they have developed pain-free blood sugar testing for diabetics, a non-invasive strip that checks glucose levels via saliva.

For diabetics, managing their blood sugar levels typically means pricking their fingers multiple times a day with a lancet and then placing a drop of blood on a testing strip. Understandably, some diabetes sufferers avoid the painful process by minimising their tests.

However, this latest test works by embedding an enzyme that detects glucose into a transistor that can then transmit the presence of glucose, according to Paul Dastoor, professor of physics at the University of Newcastle in Australia, who led the team that created it.

He said the tests create the prospect of pain-free, low-cost glucose testing which should lead to much better outcomes for diabetes sufferers.

“Your saliva has glucose in it and that glucose concentration follows your blood glucose. But it is a concentration about 100 times lower which means that we had to develop a test that is low cost, easy to manufacture, but that has sensitivity about 100 times higher than standard glucose blood test,” Dastoor told Al Jazeera.
Since the electronic materials in the transistor are inks, the test can be made through low-cost printing.

“The materials that we work with are remarkable, they are electronic inks that can act as electronic material, but the difference is that we can print them at massive scale using a reel-to-reel printer, the same that you use to make newspapers,” Dastoor said.

The project secured A$6.3 million ($4.7m) in funding from the Australian government to establish a facility to produce the test kits should clinical trials be passed.

Dastoor says the technology could also be transferred to COVID-19 testing and allergen, hormone and cancer testing.

The university is already working with Harvard University on a test for COVID-19 using the same technology.

Massachusetts [US], August 14 (ANI): According to a new study from researchers at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, ultra-processed foods have become a larger part of kids’ and teens’ diets, which may be associated with health risks.
The findings of the study were published in the journal ‘JAMA’.
The calories that children and adolescents consumed from ultra-processed foods jumped from 61 per cent to 67 per cent of total caloric intake from 1999 to 2018.
The study analysed dietary intake from 33,795 children and adolescents nationwide.
“Some whole-grain breads and dairy foods are ultra-processed, and they’re healthier than other ultra-processed foods. Processing can keep food fresher longer, allows for food fortification and enrichment, and enhances consumer convenience,” said senior and corresponding author Fang Fang Zhang, a nutrition epidemiologist at the Friedman School.
“But many ultra-processed foods are less healthy, with more sugar and salt, and less fibre, than unprocessed and minimally processed foods, and the increase in their consumption by children and teenagers is concerning,” added Zhang.
The largest spike in calories came from such ready-to-eat or ready-to-heat dishes as takeout and frozen pizza and burgers: from 2.2 per cent to 11.2 per cent of calories.
The second-largest spike in calories came from packaged sweet snacks and desserts, the consumption of which grew from 10.6 per cent to 12.9 per cent.
There was a larger increase in the consumption of ultra-processed foods among non-Hispanic Blacks (10.3 per cent) and Mexican Americans (7.6 per cent) than non-Hispanic Whites (5.2 per cent).
Trends in other racial/ethnic groups were not assessed due to a lack of sufficient data that allow for nationally representative estimates across survey cycles.
There were no statistically significant differences in the overall findings by parental education and family income. “The lack of disparities based on parental education and family income indicates that ultra-processed foods are pervasive in children’s diets,” said Zhang.

TOKYO, Aug 3,2021: Japan will focus on hospitalising patients who are seriously ill with COVID-19 and those at risk of becoming so while others isolate at home, officials said, amid worries about a strained medical system as cases surge in Olympics host city Tokyo.

The country has seen a sharp increase in coronavirus cases, and is recording more than 10,000 daily new infections nationwide. Tokyo had a record high of 4,058 on Saturday.

Fewer elderly people, most of whom are vaccinated, are getting infected, Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato told reporters.

“On the other hand, infections of younger people are increasing and people in their 40s and 50s with severe symptoms are rising,” he said. “With people also being admitted to hospital with heat stroke, some people are not able to immediately get admitted and are recovering at home.”

Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, announcing the change on Monday, said the government would ensure that people isolating at home can be hospitalised if necessary.

Previous policy had focused on hospitalising a broader category of high-risk patients.

Some worry the shift could lead to more deaths, and opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan leader Yukio Edano blasted change.

“They call it in-home treatment but it’s actually in-home abandonment,” NHK public TV quoted him as saying.

Japan on Monday expanded its state of emergency to include three prefectures near Tokyo and the western prefecture of Osaka. An existing emergency in Tokyo – its fourth since the pandemic began – and Okinawa is now set to last through Aug. 31.

The country has avoided a devastating outbreak of the virus, with about 932,000 total cases and just over 15,000 deaths as of Sunday.

But it is now struggling to contain the highly transmissible Delta variant even as the public grows weary of mostly voluntary limits on their activities and the vaccination rollout lags.

Just under 30% of the population is fully vaccinated, includingthree-quarters of those 65 and over.

Nearly 70% of hospital beds for seriously ill COVID-19 patients were filled as of Sunday, Tokyo data showed.

According to health ministry guidelines, seriously ill patients are defined as those needing admission to Intensive Care Units (ICU) or artificial respirators.

The Tokyo Shimbun newspaper said 12,000 patients were isolating at home, a 12-fold increase in the past month.

Suga and Olympics organisers say there is no link between the July 23-Aug. 8 Summer Games and the sharp increase in cases. Medical experts, however, have said holding the Olympics sent a confusing message about the need to stay home, contributing to the rise.

Unlike the voluntary restrictions and low vaccination rates elsewhere in Japan, more than 80% of the people in the Olympic village in Tokyo for athletes and coaches are vaccinated, testing is compulsory and movement is curtailed.

Organisers on Tuesday announced 18 new Games-related COVID-19 cases, bringing the total since July 1 to 294.