India’s covid crisis is 'beyond heart-breaking': WHO chief

Agencies
April 27, 2021

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Apr 27: The World Health Organization chief voiced alarm on Monday at India's record-breaking wave of Covid-19 cases and deaths, saying the organisation was rushing to help address the crisis.

"The situation in India is beyond heartbreaking," Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters.

He spoke as India battles a catastrophic coronavirus wave that has overwhelmed hospitals, with crematoriums working at full capacity.

A surge in recent days has seen patients' families taking to social media to beg for oxygen supplies and locations of available hospital beds, and has forced the capital New Delhi to extend a week-long lockdown.

"WHO is doing everything we can, providing critical equipment and supplies," Tedros said.

He said the UN health agency was among other things sending "thousands of oxygen concentrators, prefabricated mobile field hospitals and laboratory supplies".

The WHO also said it had transferred more than 2,600 of its experts from various programmes, including polio and tuberculosis, to work with Indian health authorities to help respond to the pandemic.

The country of 1.3 billion has become the latest hotspot of a pandemic that has killed more than three million people worldwide, even as richer countries take steps towards normality with accelerating vaccination programmes.

The US and Britain rushed ventilators and vaccine materials to help India weather the crisis, while a range of other countries also pledged support.

Global surge

Since the virus that causes Covid-19 first surfaced in China in late 2019, the disease has killed more than 3.1 million people out of at least 147 million infected, according to a tally from official sources compiled by AFP.

Tedros on Monday lamented that global new case numbers have been rising for the past nine weeks straight.

"To put it in perspective," he said, "there were almost as many cases globally last week as in the first five months of the pandemic."

The United States remains the worst-affected country, with some 572,200 deaths and over 32 million infections, followed by Brazil and Mexico.

But India, in fourth place, has in recent days been driving the global caseload.

The country, which has recorded over 195,000 deaths, registered 2,812 new deaths and 352,991 new infections on Monday alone -- its highest tolls since the start of the pandemic.

"The exponential growth that we've seen in case numbers is really, truly astonishing," Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO's technical lead on Covid-19, told reporters.

She warned that India was not unique, pointing out that a number of countries had seen "similar trajectories of increases in transmission".

"This can happen in a number of countries ... if we let our guard down," she said. "We're in a fragile situation."

Covax hit

Meanwhile, the Indian crisis has taken a toll on the Covax programme aimed at providing equitable access to Covid-19 vaccines, with a particular focus on 92 poorer nations.

Prior to the surge, India was exporting tens of millions of AstraZeneca shots made domestically by the Serum Institute through Covax, which is co-run by the WHO, the Gavi vaccine alliance and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI).

But once cases started surging, New Delhi froze exports -- including to Covax -- to prioritise India.

This has left Covax short 90 million doses that had been intended for 60 low-income countries in March and April, the WHO and Gavi said.

"Those have not been made available given the crisis in India. Now they're being used domestically," Gavi chief Seth Berkley told the briefing.

Covax, he said, was "looking at other options" while waiting for the supplies to resume.

Among other things, the Covax partners have appealed to countries that have excess vaccine doses to share them with the programme.

Berkley said that it was "early days" on those discussions, but so far France, New Zealand and Spain had vowed to share some of their doses.

To date, some 40.8 million Covid-19 vaccine doses have been distributed to 118 countries and territories through Covax.

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News Network
March 27,2024

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The Enforcement Directorate has filed a money laundering case against Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan's daughter Veena Vijayan, her IT company and some others to probe a case of alleged illegal payments made by a private mineral firm to her and the company, official sources said Wednesday.

The agency has registered a case under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) and is expected to summon the people involved, the sources said.

The ED case has been booked after taking cognisance of a complaint filed by the Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO), an investigative arm of the Union corporate affairs ministry, they said.

The case stems from an Income Tax Department investigation that alleged that a private company called Cochin Minerals And Rutile Ltd (CMRL), made an illegal payment of Rs 1.72 crore to Veena's company-- Exalogic Solutions-- during 2018 to 2019, even though the IT firm had not provided any service to the company.

The Karnataka High Court had last month dismissed a plea filed by Exalogic Solutions against the probe initiated by the SFIO.

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News Network
March 19,2024

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Bengaluru, Mar 19: Former Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai on Monday said that the Congress will split in three months after the upcoming Lok Sabha polls and its impact will be visible on the Siddaramaiah-led state government.

"Due to internal squabbles, the state government will not last long," the BJP leader said.

Talking to reporters on Monday, he said the sitting MP from the Gadag-Haveri constituency, Shivakumar Udasi, has done a lot of development work and implemented the Central government's schemes effectively.

"Prime Minister Narendra Modi will surely become the PM for the third time. The overall response has been good in the Gadag-Haveri Lok Sabha constituency," the former Karnataka chief minister said.

Asked if he was contesting the election in a half-hearted manner in the Gadag-Haveri seat, Bommai said "such a question does not arise when the party's high command gives instructions".

He said he would respect his opponent and not take anyone lightly. 

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News Network
March 16,2024

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Ottawa, Mar 16: An Indian-origin couple and their teenage daughter were killed in a "suspicious" fire which tore through their home last week in Canada's Ontario province, police said on Friday.

A fire engulfed a home at the Big Sky Way and Van Kirk Drive area of Brampton on March 7, a press release by the Peel Police said.

After the blaze was put out, investigators located what was believed to be human remains within the gutted house, but the number of people killed couldn't be ascertained at the time.

The charred remains were on Friday identified as those of three family members: 51-year-old Rajiv Warikoo; his wife, 47-year-old Shilpa Kotha; and their 16-year-old daughter, Mahek Warikoo.

Police said that they resided at the address before the fire.

Peel police Constable Taryn Young on Friday said the fire had been deemed suspicious, the CTV news channel reported.

"At this time, we are investigating this with our homicide bureau, and we are deeming this as suspicious as the Ontario Fire Marshal has deemed that this fire was not accidental," the report quoted Young as saying.

"There's not much left to it," Young said when asked about the possible cause of the fire.

"Looking into something like that as a fire marshal, I'm sure it's very tough when there is not much left to look at. But we are exhausting all avenues," she said.

The deceased family's neighbour, Kenneth Yousaf, said that the family had lived on the street for about 15 years, and he never noticed any problems with them.

Yousaf said he was alerted to the fire last week by a family member, who heard a big "bang." "When we came out, the house was on fire. So sad. Within a few hours, everything was down to the ground," the report quoted Yousaf as saying.

In a press release, police said they are continuing to investigate the deaths of the three family members and urged anyone with information to come forward.

"The circumstances surrounding the house fire remains the focus of an active investigation, and anyone with information or video footage (dashcam or otherwise) is urged to contact Homicide detectives," police said.

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