Don’t panic, bird flu is common in winter: Sr official

Don’t panic, bird flu is common in winter: Sr official

Neha.Madaan@timesgroup.com

Pune:13.01.2021

Avian flu occurs every year in the country because migratory birds bring the infection to India from across the world, Atul Chaturvedi, the secretary of the Union government’s department of animal husbandry, dairy and fisheries told TOI on Tuesday.

On the sudden outbreak of avian influenza in parts of the country, Chaturvedi said, “The outbreaks usually happen in winter months, starting from September-October till February-March. Unnecessary panic need not be created about avian influenza — a common phenomenon in India. Some years, the bird mortalities are more and in others less. Every year, India gets the disease because of bird migrations and is declared bird flu-free subsequently after the outbreak is over.”

He said, “In the history of bird flu in India over the last 15 years since 2006, not a single instance has been reported when the infection was passed on to humans. Human to human transmission is even more remote.”

Chaturvedi said there was also no requirement for banning import of poultry products from affected states, which some states were doing, because the infected poultry was being culled and not allowed to move out of the infected zone. “There should be no apprehension about the consumption of poultry products if they are cooked properly,” he said.

He said the states had been told to prioritise the testing of dead bird samples, which was of prime importance to contain the spread of avian influenza.

Chaturvedi said three states — Maharashtra, Haryana and Kerala — among the 10 affected with avian influenza so far in India had reported the outbreak in poultry and duck population, where culling might be required.

Full report on www.toi.in

Countdown to Delhi vaccination begins with 2.6L doses landing

Countdown to Delhi vaccination begins with 2.6L doses landing

Alok K N Mishra & Sidhartha Roy

New Delhi:13.01.2021

After over 10 months of counting Covid-19 cases daily, the capital on Tuesday began to keep track of a new tally with 2.64 lakh doses of Covishield vaccine arriving at Delhi airport. Stored at the city’s largest and central Covid vaccine cold storage facility at Rajiv Gandhi Super Speciality Hospital in east Delhi, the vials will inject new hope into the fight against the pandemic from Saturday.

Starting with 8,900 healthcare workers, who are to be inoculated at 89 booths across the capital, the unprecedented campaign aims to vaccinate 2.25 lakh healthcare workers before moving on to other vulnerable groups and gradually widening the scope to cover people in the rest of the city.

The vials are protected by three security layers and have been stored at an optimal temperature (2 to 8o C). A cold van delivered 22 boxes of vaccines at the hospital with each box containing 12,000 doses.

Special flight brings vials to IGI

Delhi’s first vaccine consignment arrived on a SpiceXpress SG 8937 at IGI airport at 10.15am in specially packed airtight containers. The flights are capable of transporting extremely sensitive drugs, blood samples and vaccines in a controlled temperature range of -40o C to +25o C. P 3

Police set up ‘green corridor’

Delhi Police put in place a “green corridor” and deployed escort vehicles for the two containers from Delhi airport on Tuesday afternoon.“A distance of around 40km was covered in around 52 minutes,” joint commissioner of police (traffic) Manish Agrawal said. P 3

100 to be vaccinated a day at each booth

Each box has 1,200 vials and each vial contains 10 doses.

An official said the entire storage facility at the hospital is under 24x7 CCTV surveillance with Delhi Police personnel and the hospital’s own security staff standing guard.

The vaccine will be sent by the health & family welfare department in cold vans to over 89 cold chain points which are located near 89 vaccination booths where the drive will be launched. An official said the vaccine can be stored easily at the cold chain points for a long period. "For the booths located at the government facilities, the vials will be sent a day before Saturday while for the booths located at private hospitals, these will be sent on Saturday morning," said Dr Suneela Garg, director-professor and head of community medicine at Maulana Azad Medical College and a public health expert.

CM Arvind Kejriwal will kickstart the vaccination programme at a function at Lok Nayak Hospital. At each vaccination booth, only a 100 people will be vaccinated in a day.

Those who have enrolled for vaccination will receive text messages from the districts a day earlier mentioning date and time and address of the booth. The SMS and an identity card will be needed to be produced at the booth.

Each booth will have three rooms and will be guarded by Delhi Police and managed by civil defence volunteers. Verification of the credentials of the beneficiary will be done in the first room and entries will be made on the Co-WIN app. The person will then be inoculated in another room. The next stop will be the observation room where the beneficiary will have to stay for 30 minutes to guard against any adverse event.

Rajiv Gandhi Super Speciality Hospital was selected after the Centre wrote a letter to the Delhi government a few months ago asking for identifying a space of around 5,000 square metres. A team of the Union health ministry surveyed and approved the utility block after which the building was retrofitted.

"The modifications carried out included changing of existing doors so that the deep freezers for bulk storage could be brought in easily. More electricity points were also added and adequate power back-up arranged," said a gover nment official.

Delhi government has identified two more storage facilities. "We also have our existing facility at Battery Lane in north Delhi’s Civil Lines area as a secondary storage point and a third one has been identified at the office of the Directorate General of Health Services in Karkardooma in east Delhi. However, two storage facilities would be more than enough for our requirements and we have identified the third one in case the need arises," he said.

•PM to interact with city health workers on Sat, P 4

•Corpn staff to skip vax duty over arrears, P 4 8 9

VACCINE BOOTHS IDENTIFIED FOR DRIVE

No assured career progression for staff in pvt institutions: HC

No assured career progression for staff in pvt institutions: HC

Ajay.Sura@timesgroup.com

Chandigarh:13.01.2021

Punjab and Haryana high court has made it clear that teaching staff and non-teaching employees serving in private government-aided schools and colleges in Haryana would not be entitled to assured career progression (ACP) and other similar benefits provided to regular staff working in state-run institutions.

“It may be noted here that the ACP was introduced to remove stagnation. It is an incentive to employees who work on a post continuously without getting opportunity to progress in the service. With this object in mind, these rules were notified. However, teachers of aided schools and non-teaching staff of aided colleges are not employees of the government and therefore, they cannot, as a matter of right, claim benefits under the ACP,” the HC has ruled.

On the contentions that such benefits of ACP are available to technical colleges, the HC made it clear that those colleges constitute a different category. As regards the plea of non-teaching employees of affiliated colleges for ACP benefits, the HC clarified that statutory provisions do not entitle non-teaching employees parity with the government employee with respect to benefit of ACP Rules, 1998.

Justice Anil Kshetarpal of the HC passed these orders while hearing a bunch of petitions filed by Haryana State Adhyapak Sangh, Haryana Private Colleges Non-Teaching Employees Union and others.

The petitioners, employees of privately managed aided schools/colleges, approached the HC to issue directions to the state of Haryana to pay benefits under the Haryana Civil Services (Assured Career Progression) Rules framed from time to time. In the year 2016, the state notified the Haryana Civil Services (Assured Career Progression) Rules, 2016 substituting the previous one.

The issue before the HC was whether teachers and employees of privately managed aided school/colleges are entitled to benefits at par with government servants, under the Haryana Civil Services (Assured Career Progression) Rules, 1998 or rules framed thereafter, substituting the previous one. The HC observed that it is apparent from the definition of government servants/government employees makes it is explicitly clear that the rules are applicable only to government servants.

Medico falls from 3rd floor, dies

Medico falls from 3rd floor, dies

Indore:13.01.2021

A 19-year-old MBBS student died after falling from third floor of Index Medical College hostel after slipping from the window on Monday.

Khudel police station in-charge Mahendra Singh Bhadoriya said that the youth was identified as Ayushman, son of Amit alias Vicky Gupta who hailed from Shivpuri and had been studying in Indore in second semester. Ayushman’s mother is also a doctor in Shivpuri. He had joined the course in Index Medical College in 2019.

It came to fore that the youth was standing in the third floor alley of his hostel when someone called him from the ground floor. As he peeped down, he slipped and fell.

The incident was recorded in CCTVs installed in the area in which it became clear that he had slipped and fallen. Officials said that they were checking all the points in the case. TNN

ID cards for third gender in Bhopal, a first in India

ID cards for third gender in Bhopal, a first in India

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Bhopal:13.01.2021

In a novel initiative, the Bhopal administration has started giving identity cards to persons from the third gender, so that they could also take benefits of the government’s welfare schemes.

After they get ID cards, persons from the third gender will be eligible for schemes run by the social justice department.

Joint director, social justice department, R P Singh, said that Bhopal is, perhaps, the first district in the country to be giving ID cards to persons from the third gender. It would not only give a distinct recognition to them, but also enable them take benefits of the government schemes and schemes especially meant for them could also be made at the government-level, he added.

All members of the transgender community living in Bhopal would get the identity cards.

All CA exams to be held online

All CA exams to be held online

Mulls Statutory Body ICAI Post Covid-19 Pandemic

Prashant.Rupera@timesgroup.com

Vadodara:13.01.2021

During the peak of Covid-19 induced pandemic, Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI), the statutory body that manages the CA profession in the country, had gone ahead with exams in physical mode.

But in the long-run, world’s second largest professional body of CAs, has decided to conduct online exams only.

CA exams are conducted in May and November ever year. However, owing to the pandemic, the exams scheduled in May last year were postponed multiple times and later merged with the November exams.

In fact, ahead of the November 2020 exams, some students had even filed a writ petition before the Supreme Court raising safety concerns which was disposed of by the court.

“We are seriously considering all the possible options to make all the exams of all three levels – foundation, intermediate and final stages of CA – online. Our Delhi council is exploring the means. We will adopt the best model,” said Lalit Bajaj, chairman of Western India Regional Council (WIRC) of ICAI said on Tuesday.

Bajaj, who along with other office-bearers of WIRC took part in felicitation programme organised by Vadodara branch.

“The nature of CA exams is quite different. While the questions are asked in analytical format, the answers are not objective type but descriptive in nature. Currently, we have lot of MCQbased models for online examinations. We are exploring an alternative online model which assesses analytical skills keeping in mind all safety concerns,” said WIRC’s vice-chairman Vishal Doshi.

Unlike exams conducted by other institutes, the CA exams are held nation-wide and continue for days together. “There are other competitive exams which are held for a day or couple of days. But CA exams are held pan-India and they go on for 25 days covering all the three stages – making it a challenging task,” said Doshi.

Meanwhile, the CA examinations for the students who had opted-out from November 2020 examinations and opted for November 2020 cycle-II are scheduled from January 21 to February 7.

Across western region covering Gujarat, Maharashtra and Goa, the November exams had witnessed 70% turnout.

HC rejects plea for online test in GTU

HC rejects plea for online test in GTU

Ahmedabad:  13.01.2021

The Gujarat high court on Tuesday turned down the petition filed by students of the Gujarat Technological University (GTU) opposing the university’s decision to conduct pen-paper exams and not granting an option of online test for semester exams.

The students had approached the HC after GTU refused to grant an option of online exam for semester exam and insisted that the students would have to appear in person to take the tests.

The students claimed that GTU had conducted final year examinations online earlier due to Covid-19. There was no reason to put the students at risk amid the pandemic by asking them to go and sit in the exam at the exam centres, when the university can conduct it online. TNN