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  • Risk of mucormycosis in Covid-19 patients

    About mucormycosis

    • Mucormycosis is a fungal infection that has a high mortality rate of 50 per cent.
    • An increasing number of Covid-19 patients have been developing this infection while still at the hospital or after discharge.
    • The disease often manifests in the skin and also affects the lungs and the brain.
    • Some of the common symptoms include sinusitis, blackish nasal discharge, facial pain, headaches, and pain around the eyes.

    Who is at risk

    • Patients who have been hospitalised for Covid-19 and particularly those who require oxygen therapy during Covid-19 illness are at a much higher risk of mucormycosis.
    • However, there are some cases of mucormycosis in patients with asymptomatic Covid-19 infection.
    • Before the pandemic, patients with uncontrolled diabetes were at a higher risk of mucormycosis.
    • The risk of mucormycosis rises for these patients for two reasons.
    • First is that Covid-19 further impairs their immune system.
    • Second, they are given corticosteroids for their treatment it leads to a rise in their blood sugar level thus increasing their risk of mucormycosis.

    Treatment

    • Today, we have a number of drugs and anti-fungal medicines that can treat mucormycosis.
    • These are given by IV or taken orally.
    • Surgery is needed to remove the affected dead tissues along with antifungal therapy.

  • National Programme on Advanced Chemistry Cell Battery Storage

    About the scheme

    • The Cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister has approved the proposal of Department of Heavy Industry for implementation of the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) Scheme ‘National Programme on Advanced Chemistry Cell (ACC) Battery Storage’.
    • Each selected ACC battery Storage manufacturer would have to commit to set-up an ACC manufacturing facility of minimum five (5) GWh capacity and ensure a minimum 60% domestic value addition at the Project level within five years.
    • Furthermore, the beneficiary firms have to achieve a domestic value addition of at least 25% and incur the mandatory investment Rs.225 crore /GWh within 2 Years (at the Mother Unit Level) and raise it to 60% domestic value addition within 5 Years, either at Mother Unit, in-case of an Integrated Unit, or at the Project Level, in-case of “Hub & Spoke” structure.
    • The scheme will help in achieving manufacturing capacity of Fifty (50) Giga Watt Hour (GWh) of ACC and 5 GWh of “Niche” ACC with an outlay of Rs.18,100 crore.

    About ACC

    • ACCs are the new generation of advanced storage technologies that can store electric energy either as electrochemical or as chemical energy and convert it back to electric energy as and when required.

    Benefits of the scheme

    • Setup a cumulative 50 GWh of ACC manufacturing facilities in India under the Programme.
    • Direct investment of around Rs.45,000 crore in ACC Battery storage manufacturing projects.
    • Facilitate demand creation for battery storage in India.
    • Facilitate Make-ln-lndia: Greater emphasis upon domestic value-capture and therefore reduction in import dependence.
    • Net savings of Indian Rs. 2,00,000 crore to Rs.2,50,000 crore on account of oil import bill reduction during the period of this Programme due to EV adoption as ACCs manufactured under the Programme is expected to accelerate EV adoption.
    • The manufacturing of ACCs will facilitate demand for EVs, which are proven to be significantly less polluting.
    • As India pursues an ambitious renewable energy agenda, the ACC program will be a key contributing factor to reduce India’s Green House Gas (GHG) emissions which will be in line with India’s commitment to combat climate change.
    • Import substitution of around Rs.20,000 crore every year.
    • The impetus to Research & Development to achieve higher specific energy density and cycles in ACC.
    • Promote newer and niche cell technologies.

  • [pib] NITI Aayog and Mastercard Release Report on financial inclusion

    About the report

    • NITI Aayog and Mastercardtoday released a report titled ‘Connected Commerce: Creating a Roadmap for a Digitally Inclusive Bharat’.
    • The report identifies challenges in accelerating digital financial inclusion in India and provides recommendations for making digital services accessible to its 1.3 billion citizens.
    • The report highlights key issues and opportunities, with inferences and recommendations on policy and capacity building across agriculture, small business (MSMEs), urban mobility and cybersecurity.
    • This report looks at some key sectors and areas that need digital disruptions to bring financial services to everyone.

    Key recommendations in the report include:

    • Strengthening the payment infrastructure to promote a level playing field for NBFCs and banks.
    • Digitizing registration and compliance processes and diversifying credit sources to enable growth opportunities for MSMEs.
    • Building information sharing systems, including a ‘fraud repository’, and ensuring that online digital commerce platforms carry warnings to alert consumers to the risk of frauds.
    • Enabling agricultural NBFCs to access low-cost capital and deploy a ‘phygital’ (physical + digital) model for achieving better long-term digital outcomes.
    • Digitizing land records will also provide a major boost to the sector.
    • To make city transit seamlessly accessible to all with minimal crowding and queues, leveraging existing smartphones andcontactless cards, and aim for an inclusive, interoperable, and fully open system such as that of the London ‘Tube’.

  • NASA’s OSIRIS-REx begins journey back from asteroid

    On May 11, NASA’s Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft will depart asteroid Bennu, and start its two-year-long journey back to Earth.

    About OSIRIS-REx

    • OSIRIS-REx is NASA’s first mission to visit a near-Earth asteroid, survey its surface and collect a sample from it.
    • The mission was launched in 2016, it reached its target in 2018 and since then, the spacecraft has been trying to match the velocity of the asteroid using small rocket thrusters.
    • It also utilised this time to survey the surface and identify potential sites to take samples.
    • In October 2020, the spacecraft briefly touched asteroid Bennu, from where it collected samples of dust and pebbles. 
    • Once the surface was disturbed, the spacecraft’s robotic arm captured some samples.
    • The spacecraft’s engineers have also confirmed that shortly after the spacecraft made contact with the surface, it fired its thrusters and “safely backed away from Bennu”.

    About Bennu

    • Bennu is considered to be an ancient asteroid that has not gone through a lot of composition-altering change through billions of years, which means that below its surface lie chemicals and rocks from the birth of the solar system.
    • Around 20-40 percent of Bennu’s interior is empty space and scientists believe that it was formed in the first 10 million years of the solar system’s creation, implying that it is roughly 4.5 billion years old.
    • Bennu is a B-type asteroid, implying that it contains significant amounts of carbon and various other minerals.
    • Because of its high carbon content, the asteroid reflects about four percent of the light that hits it, which is very low when compared with a planet.
    • Bennu is named after an Egyptian deity.
    • The asteroid was discovered by a team from the NASA-funded Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research team in 1999.

  • What is 2-deoxy-D-glucose (2-DG) and is it effective against Covid?

    About the drug

    • DRDO’s new anti-Covid oral drug, 2-deoxy-D-glucose (2-DG), was recently granted emergency use approval by the Drug Controller General of India (DCGI).
    •  2-DG halts the spread of COVID-19 inside the body cells.
    • Clinical trial results have shown that this molecule helps in faster recovery of hospitalised patients and reduces supplemental oxygen dependence.
    • In efficacy trends, the patients treated with 2-DG showed faster symptomatic cure than Standard of Care (SoC) on various endpoints.
    • A significantly favourable trend (2.5 days difference) was seen in terms of the median time to achieving normalisation of specific vital signs parameters when compared to SoC.

    How 2-DG reduces dependence on oxygen

    • The 2 DG drug, like glucose, spreads through the body, reaches the virus-infected cells and prevents virus growth by stopping viral synthesis and destroys the protein’s energy production.
    • The drug also works on virus infection spread into lungs which help us to decrease patients dependability on oxygen.

     

  • A TRIPS waiver is useful but not a magic pill

    The article highlights the challenges countries could face despite the patent waiver for Covid-19 vaccine.

    TRIPS waiver for Covid-19 vaccine

    • The United States has finally relented and declared its support for a temporary waiver of the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement for COVID-19 vaccines at the World Trade Organisation (WTO).
    • Hopefully, the U.S.’s decision would cause other holdouts like Canada and the European Union to give up their opposition.
    • While the U.S.’s decision is to be welcomed, the devil would be in the details.

    The challenges after waiver

    1) Conditions of the waiver

    •  If the experience of negotiating such waivers, especially on TRIPS, were anything to go by, it would be too early to celebrate.
    • In the aftermath of the HIV/AIDS crisis the WTO adopted a decision in 2003 waiving certain TRIPS obligations to increase the accessibility of medicines.
    • However, this waiver (later incorporated as Article 31 bis in the TRIPS agreement) was subject to several stringent requirements such as the drugs so manufactured are to be exported to that nation only; the medicines should be easily identifiable through different colour.
    • Given these cumbersome requirements, hardly any country, in the last 17 years, made effective use of this waiver.

    2) Countries will protect the interest of pharma companies

    •  India and South Africa proposed a waiver not just on vaccines but also on medicines and other therapeutics and technologies related to the treatment of COVID-19.
    • So, the U.S. has already narrowed down the scope of the waiver considerably by restricting it to vaccines.
    • Medicines useful in treating COVID-19 and other therapeutics must be also included in the waiver.
    • While the U.S. would not like to be seen as blocking the TRIPS waiver and attracting the ire of the global community, make no mistake that it would resolutely defend the interests of its pharmaceutical corporations.

    3) Lack of access to technology

    • The TRIPS waiver would lift the legal restrictions on manufacturing COVID-19 vaccines.
    • But it would not solve the problem of the lack of access to technological ‘know-how’ related to manufacturing COVID-19 vaccines.
    • Waiving IP protection does not impose a legal requirement on pharmaceutical companies to transfer or share technology.
    • While individual countries may adopt coercive legal measures for a forced transfer of technology, it would be too draconian and counterproductive.
    • Therefore, governments would have to be proactive in negotiating and cajoling pharmaceutical companies to transfer technology using various legal and policy tools including financial incentives.

    4) Domestic IP regulation

    • While a TRIPS waiver would enable countries to escape WTO obligations, it will not change the nature of domestic IP regulations.
    • Therefore, countries should start working towards making suitable changes in their domestic legal framework to operationalise and enforce the TRIPS waiver.
    • In this regard, the Indian government should immediately put in place a team of best IP lawyers who could study the various TRIPS waiver scenarios and accordingly recommend the changes to be made in the Indian legal framework.

    Conclusion

    Notwithstanding the usefulness of the TRIPS waiver, it is not a magic pill. It would work well only if countries simultaneously address the non-IP bottlenecks.

  • Power generation from renewables increased despite drop in new capacity

    What the data from Central Electricity Authority says

    • The total power generation from renewable energy sources including solar, wind, bagasse, biomass, small hydro and others stood at 147.25 billion units in FY21 compared with 138.34 billion units in FY20.
    • This is an increase of six per cent, according to data from the Central Electricity Authority.
    • All other key segments such as thermal, hydro and nuclear have reported a drop in power generation during FY21.
    • This is despite a significant drop in new capacity addition in the renewables sector in Covid-battered 2020-21.
    • The total power generation from renewable energy sources (including solar, wind, bagasse, biomass, small hydro and others) stood at 147.25 billion units in FY21 compared with 138.34 billion units in FY20.
    • In FY21, total power generation from thermal, hydro, nuclear and renewables stood at 1372.9 billion units compared with 1383.33 billion units in FY20.

    Factors responsible

    • There are several factors working for an increase in generation by renewable sources.
    • The first factor is the thrust given to renewable energy by the government.
    • Second is the growing environmental awareness in the country, and the potential growth is driving more capacity creation here.
    • Third, getting in investment, — both domestic and foreign, is easier as this is an attractive area for them.

  • Environment Appraisal Committee allows Great Nicobar plan to advance

    About the Great Nicobar plan

    • The Environment Appraisal Committee (EAC) – Infrastructure I of the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) has flagged serious concerns about NITI Aayog’s ambitious project for Great Nicobar Island.
    • The EAC was responding to ‘pre-feasibility’ report, ‘Holistic Development of Great Nicobar Island at Andaman and Nicobar Islands’.
    • The report is prepared for the NITI Aayog by the Gurugram-based consulting agency.
    • The proposal includes an international container transshipment terminal, a greenfield international airport, a power plant and a township complex spread over 166 sq. km. and is estimated to cost ₹75,000 crore.
    • The committee has, however, removed the first hurdle faced by the project.
    • It has recommended it “for grant of terms of reference (TOR)” for Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) studies, which in the first instance will include baseline studies over three months.

    What the EAC said

    • The committee noted that the site selection for the port had been done mainly on technical and financial criteria, ignoring the environmental aspects.
    • It has now asked for an independent study/ evaluation for the suitability of the proposed port site with specific focus on Leatherback Turtle, Nicobar Magapode and Dugong.
    • It highlighted the need for an independent assessment of terrestrial and marine biodiversity, a study on the impact of dredging, reclamation and port operations, including oil spills.
    • It has also highlighted the need for studies of alternative sites for the port with a focus on environmental and ecological impact,  analysis of risk-handling capabilities, a seismic and tsunami hazard map, a disaster management plan, an assessment of the cumulative impact, and a hydro-geological study to assess impact on round and surface water regimes.
    • The committee has also asked for details of the corporate environment policy of the implementing agency — whether the company has an environment policy, a prescribed standard operating procedure to deal with environmental and forest violations, and a compliance management system.

  • Mini-Seed Kits to boost pulses output in kharif 2021

    Central government to distribute mini-kits of seed

    • The government on said it will distribute over 20 lakh mini-kits of seeds worth Rs 82.01 crore as part of a strategy to boost pulses production in the kharif season of the 2021-22 crop year.
    • The total cost for these mini-kits will be borne by the central government to boost the production and productivity of tur, moong and urad.
    • In addition to this, the usual programme of inter-cropping and area expansion by the states will continue on a sharing basis between the Centre and state, it said.

    Increasing production and productivity

    • From a meagre production of 14.76 million tonnes in the 2007-08 crop year, pulses production has now reached 24.42 million tonnes in the 2020-2021 crop year, which is a phenomenal increase of 65 per cent.
    • India is still importing around 4 lakh tonnes of tur, 0.6 lakh tonnes of moong and around 3 lakh tonnes of urad for meeting its demand.
    • The special programme will increase the production and productivity of the three pulses of tur, moong and urad to a great extent and will play an important role in reducing the import burden.

  • RBI steps in to ease COVID-19 burden

    Term Liquidity Facility announced

    • Reserve Bank of India stepped in on Wednesday with measures aimed at alleviating any financing constraints for healthcare infrastructure and services reeling under the second Covid wave.
    • RBI Governor announced a Term Liquidity Facility of ₹50,000 crore with tenor of up to three years, at the repo rate, to ease access to credit for providers of emergency health services.
    • Under the scheme, banks will provide fresh lending support to a wide range of entities, including vaccine manufacturers, importers/suppliers of vaccines and priority medical devices, hospitals/dispensaries, pathology labs, manufacturers and suppliers of oxygen and ventilators, and logistics firms. 
    • These loans will continue to be classified under priority sector till repayment or maturity, whichever is earlier.

    Measures for individual and MSME borrowers

    • As part of a “comprehensive targeted policy response”, the RBI also unveiled schemes to provide credit relief to individual and MSME borrowers impacted by the pandemic.
    • RBI unveiled a Resolution Framework 2.0 for COVID-related stressed assets of individuals, small businesses and MSMEs.
    • To provide further support to small business units, micro and small industries, and other unorganised sector entities the RBI decided to conduct special three-year long-term repo operations (SLTRO) of ₹10,000 crore at the repo rate for Small Finance Banks.
    • The SFBs would be able to deploy these funds for fresh lending of up to ₹10 lakh per borrower.
    • In view of the fresh challenges brought on by the pandemic and to address the emergent liquidity position of smaller MFIs, SFBs are now being permitted to reckon fresh lending to smaller MFIs (with asset size of up to ₹500 crore) for onlending to individual borrowers as priority sector lending.

    Measure for States

    • To enable the State governments to better manage their fiscal situation in terms of their cash flows and market borrowings, maximum number of days of overdraft (OD) in a quarter is being increased from 36 to 50 days and the number of consecutive days of OD from 14 to 21 days, the RBI said.