Devi Sridhar, professor of global public health at Edinburgh University who is on the Scottish government’s coronavirus advisory board, told ‘The Times’ newspaper this weekend that she was sent white powder and a used face mask in the post last year.
“I was extremely shaken and it was probably the hardest part because it was in my real life, not virtual or online,” said Sridhar, who often appears on UK radio and television as an expert commentator on the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Indian ambassador to Cambodia, Devyani Khobragade, along with representatives from the embassies of Australia, Japan, and the US to Cambodia, jointly handed over a consignment of 3.25 lakh doses of Covishield vaccines to PM Sen at the Peace Palace in Phnom Penh.
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Nineteen drugmakers in India have signed sublicence agreements with the United Nations-backed Medicines Patent Pool (MPP) to manufacture the generic version of Pfizer’s oral COVID-19 antiviral nirmatrelvir, which is to be used in combination with ritonavir.
They are among the 35 companies across 12 countries to have entered into such agreements with MPP for manufacturing and supplying to 95 low and middle income countries, including India. The non-exclusive sublicences allow the generic manufacturers to produce raw ingredients for nirmatrelvir and/or the finished drug itself co-packaged with ritonavir.
Biden’s statement announcing Jha’s appointment praised him as one of the leading public health experts in America and “a well-known figure to many Americans from his wise and calming public presence.
” Jha is the dean of the Brown University School of Public Health.”..And as we enter a new moment in the pandemic – executing on my National COVID-19 Preparedness Plan and managing the ongoing risks from COVID – Dr Jha is the perfect person for the job,” Biden said.
Two nurses from the Kerala Health Department have won the best vaccinators’ award instituted for health care workers as part of India’s National Covid Vaccination Programme.
T R Priya, a Grade I Nursing Officer at Thiruvananthapuram General Hospital, and T. Bhavani, a JPHN Grade I at Payyannur taluk hospital in Kannur, have won the honour at the national level.
The awards constituted by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare will be given away by the Union minister Mansukh Mandaviya in New Delhi on March 8, the International Women’s Day .
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Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bombay, have developed a technique for coating face shields with a hydrophobic layer to improve their efficiency.
Face shields act as primary barriers to airborne disease-carrying droplets. But these simple face shields are made from plexiglass plastic or polyethylene terephthalate.
Plastic is hydrophilic; and tiny water droplets tend to stick to its surface. Studies have shown that the SARS-CoV-2 laden respiratory droplets can survive on different surfaces for a few hours to a few days.
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The protection offered by vaccination has been touted as a major factor in reducing the damage caused by the third wave of Covid-19 infections. Several vaccines offer a high degree of protection, with some reducing the number of symptomatic infections by over 95% in clinical trials. But what determines the extent of protection? Researchers at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc.) and Queensland Brain Institute (QBI) in Australia have addressed this question by developing a mathematical model that predicts how antibodies generated by COVID-19 vaccines confer protection against symptomatic infections. The study was published in Nature Computational Science.
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India on Saturday delivered medical supplies to Kiribati after the Pacific island nation appealed for help to deal with the first outbreak of COVID-19. The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said the consignment comprised pulse oximeters, PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) kits and emergency COVID-19 medication.
The Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) has approved Serum Institute of India’s proposal to manufacture a vaccine against omicron variant of coronavirus for examination, test and analysis, official sources said on Monday.
“With reference to your application, please find herewith the permission to manufacture SARS-CoV-2 rS Protein (COVID-19) recombinant spike protein nanoparticle vaccine (omicron variant) for examination, test and analysis under the provisions of New Drugs and Clinical Trials Rules, 2019 to manufacture the test batches of the drug/drugs mentioned therein,” an approval order issued on February 4 stated.
A team of Indian Scientists, including from Bengaluru’s Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CSIR-CCMB), in collaboration with an industry partner have developed a self-disinfecting ‘Copper-based Nanoparticle-coated Antiviral Face Mask to fight against the Covid-19 pandemic.
To this end, Scientists at the International Advanced Research Centre for Powder Metallurgy and New Materials (ARCI), an autonomous R&D Centre of Department of Science and Technology (DST), in collaboration with CSIR-CCMB and Resil Chemicals, a Bengaluru based company have developed the self-disinfecting ‘Copper-based Nanoparticle-coated Antiviral Face Masks’ under the DST sponsored Nano-Mission project, to fight against the Covid-19 pandemic.
Their Industrial partner Resil Chemicals Bengaluru is now producing such double-layer masks on large scale