Govt fast-tracks nod for vaccine procurement from other countries on emergency basis

 

Govt fast-tracks nod for vaccine

 

* Vaccines authorised by World health Organisation or Vaccine Regulators in US ,Europe , UK and Japan would be granted an emergency use approval in India mandating requirement of post-approval parallel bridging clinical trials

 

* First 100 beneficiaries of such vaccines shall be kept for assessment for 7 daysfor safety outcomes before they are rolled out across the entire country as per reports in the leading newspapers in India

 

* Among the healthcare giants , one of the largest drug manufacturing organisation Pfizer has a production capacity of 2.5 billion doses per annum and almost 1.6 billion confirmed dose purchases . From this one can confer that India has 900 million doses that India could tap into for procurement.

 

* Moderna and Johnson&Johnson , two of the largest drug manufacturers and retailers have also bid in equal terms for the same and in the process have taken in more orders than what could be produced

 

* On 12th April , Govt of India also granted permission permission for restricted emergency use of Russian vaccine Sputnik V

 

* The aforementioned regulatory approvals are intended to increase the availability of the jabs amidst a steep second wave of the infection .

 

* The vaccines can be imported in a ready- to use vial cylinder bottles or in the form of fill and use form

 

Russian made covid-19 vaccine "Sputnik-V" to be used for emergency use in India

Russian made covid-19 vaccine "Sputnik-V" to be used for emergency use in India

 

* Expert panel on drugs and vaccine regulation and adminstration in India has cleared "Sputnik V", Russia's largely used vaccine for circulation within India

 

* The administration has given in to this proposition amidst high concerns over the need to step up Covid-19 vaccine and dosages manufacture and supply within India as there is a wide bridge in demand and supply within India and thus the need for procuring the vaccine for restricted emergency use within India .

 

* The final approval upon this is to be taken by the Drug Controller of India very soon as per reports over some of the major daily newspapers circulated in India

 

* Once this proposal would be approved , Hyderabad based drug manufacturer company "Dr Reddy's Lab" will initially procure the importing license post which it will import from Russian manufacturing company and then it will supply to GOI

( Government of India )

 

* The GOI will procure "Sputnik V" from Dr Reddy's Lab for the national Covid vaccination programme but this will be in small quantities in the initial period.

 

* Stocks of the same are expected to rise by June-July 2021 as per published reports in the newspapers

 

* The Central govt expects that "Sputnik V" could be seen as a major welcome addition to "Covishield" and "Covaxin" which

are India's inhouse conceptualised, developed , manufactured and served vaccine for the citizens as well as for export to interested countries . This is expected to improve the lurking gap between the prevalent supply and demand gap as per the current trend

 

* It is however expected that with increased production of Covaxin , India's dependency over other countries for vaccine will fall and India might be able to cater to its citizens needs and welfare as per the dictats of AtmaNirbhar Bharat

Double Shield - Two Mask Theory ( Prevention is Better than Cure - Strategy for Covid-19 new impacts )

 

       Double Shield - Two Mask Theory

 

* As the second wave of Corona Virus Pandemic hit the country , many of the people have accepted a double-mask approach in order to keep the corona virus at bay as experts said that this is one of the most "advisable" and "best" methods to stop transmission

 

* Most of the people who have started practicing this trend have started wearing a surgical mask and a cloth mask or two cloth masks .

 * A double mask is the most advisable approach when someone intends to hit outdoors or to any crowded place like vegetable or grocery markets where social distancing is not usually put to best practice by the general public

 

* Also experts say that as many of the common masks that we generally use do not fit well and tightly to our faces , wearing a double mask definitely reduces the risk of the droplets from any infected person susceptible to escape from the sides of the mask either while breathing in/out or sneezing etc

 

* The double mask recommendation is based on a study conducted by US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

 

* The CDC has conducted experiments to assess two ways of improving the fit of the medical procedure masks - ie fitting a cloth mask over a medical procedure mask and knotting the ear loops of a medical procedure mask and then tucking in and flattening the extra material close to the face which substantially improved source control and reduced wearer exposure .

 

Future Shock of Technology - Cyber Threats on the Rise

 

Future Shock of Technology - Threats on Rise

 

* India is on a high alert after several cyber attacks have jeopardised the operations of major business houses and market establishments in the aftermath of UpStock's data theft

 

* One of the articles in a major newspaper circulated in India states that “With conventional weapons of mass destruction having reached frightening proportions, incentivisation of cyber warfare has become a daily news affair which requires a few resources and could be carried out discretely "

 

* So what is Cyber-Warfare.. " Cyber-Warfare by its very nature is well suited for grey-zone warfare where offensive activities are carried out below the thresholdof all out war and assymmetric attacks " . So all of those who do not have a great idea of this can relate to those scenes in hi-fi sci-fi movies over where Hackers launch their malicious automated code at targeted companies / individuals / institutions in order to either usurp classified data or usurp money in order to jolt the financial system of targeted entity or launch a series of malicious code which would infiltrate into their database and throw the complex database system out of order in order to de-stabilize the system or corrupt the system as these days most of the organisations have their secured systems connected to the world wide web and not all have secure and robust tech to deal with a cyber invasive attack of a gigantic to deal with a cyber invasive attack of a gigantic proportion until and unless the organisations that keep vigil let go off their vigilance and purport themselves as a party involved in it .

 

* It is mentioned and also needs mentioning that these could be classified as a type of threat from both China-Pakistan axis or single entities .

 

* The Union Home Ministry recently informed the Parliament that cyberattacks have risen nearly 300% during the last year amidst the growing Covid Pandemic

 

* Additionally, the Union Power and Resources Ministry of the GoI has admitted that state sponsored Chinese hacker groups have tried targeting India's critical power infrastructure . One such group whichhas surfaced called as "Red Echo" was behind the Mumbai power outage last year

 

* The article has cited its apprehensions and urges the netizens to imagine the chaos that could be caused if by chance a Chinese or Pakistani cyber strike on an Indian nuclear facility happens in future . In such a scenario , the country should cultivate both "defensive and offensive" cyberwarfare capabilities . Chief of Defense Services Mr Bipin Rawat recently revealed that the country is taking steps to counter China's cyber warfare through risk mitigation strategies , building firewalls and recovery systems and integrating the firewalls and recovery systems and integrating the three services cybersecurity resources . But it is touted that India is still way behind China in Cyber Crimes and Offences . And in order to bridge the difference, GoI (Govt of India)has to work in close range with other higher powers like USA and Russia in order to quickly upgrade their cyber tech . The article in its closing points mentions that , this being the need of the hour is a major arena where the Quad nations need to coordinate .

Odisha : Travel details mandatory for air and train passengers without -ve reports

 

Odisha : Travel details mandatory for air and train passengers without -ve reports

 

* All Train and Air passengers without RT-PCR negative reports or vaccination reports or vaccination certificates would have to furnish their details at Bhubaneswar's Biju Patnaik International Airport and the city railway station , as per orders released from Monday .

 

* Following this , all the passengers have to register themselves following which exit passes would be issued to the registered passengers

 

* According to the orders and press release of the state government , the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) will scrap the practice of spot RT-PCR testing

 

* Currently , any passenger arriving at the railway station has to produce an RTPCR negative report or a proof of the full dose of vaccine taken as a part of standard operating procedures released as standard protocol for allowing transit for the arriving passengers

 

* In case , a passenger fails to produce any of the above details , the passenger would have to go through the registration counter , fill in a form furnishing the details of the place .. they are from and the designated destination they are up to

 

* After the final registration process is over , the passenger would be provided with an exit pass which he/she would have to show at the place of exit where the Railway Police would be deployed to check

 

* For passengers belonging to Bhubaneswar , the BMC would be keeping their data for further tracking , monitoring and follow-up processes

 

* This data of the number of outbound passengers ( going to other different districts ) would be sent to the respective district adminsitrations over email

 

* The current footfall numbers recorded for Bhubaneswar is around 20,000 passengers per day with over 60 trains passing through Bhubaneswar on a daily basis

An article on Pesticide in Coconut Water (Bullet Points)

 

An article on Pesticide in Coconut Water (Bullet Points)

 

* Coconut farmers use a pesticide called " Monocrotophus " to kill pests and insects and obtain a good yield

 

* Most of the Coconut farmers wait for 45 day for harvest of their produce but some of the farmers harvest earlier for more money

 

* Kutch University in Rajasthan reports to have developed a reagent to detect chemical residue in a coconut or fruit water

 

* The chemical reagent can be used by extracting coconut peel or coconut water

 

* The colour of the coconut peel / coconut water would turn red if the coconut water contains any pesticide

 

* The varsity has planned to commercialise the discovered detection solution if it gets patent for its reagent

 

 

UpStox Stock broker farm hacking case , 25 lakhs customers data stolen from database

 

UpStox Stock broker farm hacking case , 25 lakhs customers data stolen from database

* Upstox , the country's second largest stock broker in terms of number of customers operating over the platform reported a major online security breach with hackers stealing the KYC and customers data .

 

* The data breach happened at a third party data warehouse and the collected data has been put / auctioned /sold over the dark web as per sources

 

* Dark Web is the place where illegal transaction of confidential data takes place between the parties involved in this criminal act .

 

* It is believed that such kind of data is leveraged by data brokers / data breachers to hack into the bank/demat accounts of the purported customers in order to steal money from them

 

* As you may be aware through some movies in which a hacker generally writes an automated code which would allow the hacker to creep into multiple accounts using the login information in an automated manner and deduct some token amount as mentioned in the program with respect to each of the accounts which forms as a adhoc database for the process . Following this , some amount/

all amount is auto deducted from the customers account and it is credited into the account of the program (here , its referred to as Malware) creator for the transaction process