75% of adults in India are now fully vaxxed

 75% of adults in India are now fully vaxxed

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Sushmi.Dey@timesgroup.com

31.01.2022

New Delhi: More than 75% of adults in the country are now fully vaccinated against Covid-19 with two doses of the jabs. This marks a major achievement in the mass immunisation drive that played a crucial role in keeping disease severity, hospitalisation and deaths low during the present surge powered by Omicron. PM Modi on Sunday congratulated fellow citizens for this “momentous feat” and said he is proud of all those who are making the vaccination drive a success.

A total of nearly 166 crore doses have been administe- red so far since the beginning of the immunisation drive on January 16, 2021.

7 of  TN’s 24 AEFI cases linked to vax

A Union health ministry report said seven of the 24 reported severe Adverse Events Following Immunisation cases in Tamil Nadu had side-effects related to the Covid vaccine or the immunisation process. Three patients reported side-effects directly linked to the vaccine and four immunisation-related anxiety reaction. P4

P4

KERALA UNIVERSITY OF HEALTH SCIENCES

 

A different Omicron story from Kol ICUs

 A different Omicron story from Kol ICUs

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Prithvijit.Mitra@timesgroup.com

30.01.2022

Kolkata: Instances of severe respiratory distress and Covid pneumonia has been rising among ICU patients across private hospitals in Kolkata over last two weeks.

This has prompted doctors to suspect that even Omicron can trigger lower respiratory tract illnesses, especially in the case of patients who are ‘unresponsive’ to vaccines.

A section of elderly patients with comorbidities may not have developed antibodies adequately, exposing them to a more severe disease, they argued. So far, Omicron-induced Covid had largely been restricted to upper respiratory tract and hence been mild.

There could be three reasons behind a spurt in the number of severe cases over the last 10 days, said CMRI Hospital director of pulmonology

Raja Dhar. “First, the residual Delta cases seem to be causing severe Covid more frequently than they did even during the second wave when it was the dominant strain. Secondly, a small percentage of Omicron cases have been as virulent as Delta due to a mutation that hasalmostwipedoutthedifference between the two. Finally, those still unvaccinated or partiallyvaccinated have been getting a more severe disease,” he said.

1st +ve Indian wants to return to Wuhan

 1st +ve Indian wants to return to Wuhan

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Preetu.Nair@timesgroup.com

30.01.2022

Kochi: A young woman from Thrissur was chasing her childhood dream of becoming a doctor at a medical college in Wuhan, like many more from her home state Kerala. Then the unthinkable happened — she became patient one, the first person in India to test positive for Covid detected in the Chinese city. That was two years ago: January 30, 2020.

She has moved on, though. She wants to return to Wuhan to complete her course. “We believe Covid is manageable now. What is uncertain is my daughter’s career,” said her father. 

Those were uncertain times too when she dashed out of Wuhan as the virus exploded on humanity. She reached home about a week before she tested positive, narrowly escaping harsh Chinese measures as Wuhan and international borders were sealed to stop the infection from slipping out into the community.

She doesn’t want to recall her ordeal, or be reminded of it. In the past two years, she was studying remotely from home. She completed her MBBS course online last December and passed the exams. But she has to go back to her college because Chinese  rules mandate that MBBS students do a 52-week in-person internship — equivalent to a house surgeon — in hospitals after final year of graduation. It’s a must to get the degree.

The college in Wuhan has been off-limits, though. The pandemic has been peaking, plateauing and plummeting, but not ending.

“We request the Centre to take up the matter with the Chinese authorities for the sake of Indian medical students studying there,” her father said.

‘Cases declining, but maintain vigil’

New Delhi: Even as the number of Covid-19 cases is showing early indications of a declining trend, the central government on Saturday cautioned against complacency. There’s still a need to be vigilant and not lower the guard even though active Covid cases in most states and positivity rate have shown a fall in the last two weeks, health minister Mansukh Mandaviya said in a meeting on Saturday. Health ministers and officials from Odisha, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and WB were present in the meet.

TNN

MG University staff arrested for accepting bribe

 MG University staff arrested for accepting bribe

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TIMES NEWS NETWORK

30.01.2022

Kottayam: The vigilance and anti-corruption bureau officials on Saturday arrested an employee of MG University while she was allegedly accepting a bribe of Rs 15,000 from a student. C J Elsy, who is working as a university assistant in the MBA section of the examination wing of the university, was the person arrested, said vigilance officials.

Elsy, a Pathanamthitta native, allegedly accepted bribe from a girl student who had passed MBA from a college in Ettumanur for issuing her provisional certificate. The student had studied in the 2014-16 batch. Elsy had allegedly demanded Rs 50,000 from the student for the speedy issuance of the certificate. When the student informed her that she could not bear the huge amount, Elsy agreed to reduce the bribe amount to Rs 30,000. As per the agreement, Elsy asked the student to pay Rs15,000 on Saturday and the remaining amount after a week. The student informed this to vigilance eastern range SP V G Vinod Kumar. Based on his directive, DSP of vigilance Kottayam unit Viswanathan and team arrested Elsy around 2pm on Saturday . The accused will be presented before the vigilance court in Thiruvananthapuram.

The student did her course in 2014-16 and had cleared the arrears in seven subjects later. She had appeared for a mercy chance in the remaining one paper in September last year. When the student had contacted the staff over phone to inquire about the results of the exam, Elsy had allegedly lied to her that she had failed in the exam and took Rs 1. 25 lakh from her in instalments by promising her that she would issue her a provisional certificate and consolidated mark list. 

However, when the result was published, the student passed in the paper by scoring 57 out of 100. It was then that she realized that she was being cheated. All the payments were made through the university bank account of Elsy.

Meanwhile, M G University employees union general secretary N Mahesh said that a detailed probe should be done to find if the accused had got the support from anybody else. The MGU Registrar has suspended Elsy from job pending an inquiry.

 

PG Medical rank list published

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TIMES NEWS NETWORK

30.01.2022

Thiruvananthapuram: The rank list of PG Medical course 2021 has been published. The list can be accessed on the website of Commissioner for Entrance Examinations — www. cee. kerala. gov. in.

Category wise lists have also been published on the website based on scrutiny of the documents submitted, an official statement said here on Saturday.

The rank list of service quota candidates will be published later. The facility for option registration has been extended to Saturday (January 30) till 5pm for all applicants.

During this period, there will be facility to register fresh options/rearrange registered options based on the categories (Eg: NRI, minority etc. ,) allotted as per the category list and rank list published.

Love, sex and films drove searches online last year

 Love, sex and films drove searches online last year

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U.Sudhakarreddy@timesgroup.com

30.01.2022

Hyderabad: Search trend analysis on Google has revealed that people in Telangana looked up for love, sex and gold a lot in the second year of the pandemic.

While a cross the country, people se arched ‘sexy’ (in Hindi), netizens in Telangana looked up for ‘sex’ (in Telugu) in 2021, enough to take both words in the list of top Google searches. ‘Love’ also featured in Telangana’s top list.

However, pirated websites trumped all of the above searches. People in Telangana searched for film piracy websites for Tollywood releases. Most new Tollywood movies were leaked on these sites, which are p opular in other parts of the country too. “Piracy is a criminal offence and causes huge loss to the film industry. Small and medium budget films are the worst hit. Police and agencies concerned m ust keep it in check,” Tollywood fil m director N Shankar told TOI.

Trends indicate that in  Telangana, like the rest of India, there is a large consumption of video content.

Another top search in Telangana, rather unsurpr isingly, was ‘gold rate today’. While the country searched for ‘satta’ (gambling) to try and make some quick money, netizens in Telangana typed ‘matka’ in the search window a lot.

‘CoWin app’ and ‘Covid-19 vaccine’ were also the top queries from Telangana. Many in Telangana and across the country also looked for ‘cricket’.

Top searches are terms that are most frequently searched within the chosen region. Social media platforms were also popular searches.