RT-PCR test report before boarding puts flyers in spot

RT-PCR test report before boarding puts flyers in spot

Ayyappan.V@timesgroup.com

Chennai:29.06.2021

State governments insisting on RT-PCR test report at the time of boarding flights is creating a hassle for passengers when the flight gets cancelled or rescheduled to another day.

Recently, passengers of a Chennai-Mumbai flight scheduled to depart on Sunday that got cancelled had to take the test again spending ₹1,500 as the airline said the earlier test will not be valid for the flight that was rescheduled for Monday.

Maharashtra, Jammu and Kashmir, Jharkhand, Rajasthan, West Bengal, Uttarakhand, Chandigarh, Goa and Andaman and Nicobar Islands want arriving passengers to have an RT-PCR test report with them when they arrive by flights. However, a few say do not board passengers at origin airports while a few test the people who arrive without a report. The rules and timeline for the test are not standard which creates confusion among passengers.

Maharashtra has instructed airlines that they should not board passengers if they do not have RT-PCR negative report issued from up to a maximum of 48 Hours before the time of arrival into Mumbai. Other states say that swabs should be taken 48hours before. Chandigarh says that swabs should be taken 72 hours before arrival at the destination.

Srinivasan Jambunathan, said that "My wife and child had to spend again for an RT-PCR test. The flight was on Sunday. They had given swab samples on Friday evening and a negative report was issued on Saturday morning. But the flight got cancelled and the next flight was on Monday but the airline said that a fresh report needed to be presented. We spent ₹3,100 again for the test for two people."

He said the airline staff told the swab samples should be given 48hours before.

Gurmukh Singh Bawa of Air Travellers Association said passengers face inconvenience due to these rules. "I have seen this happen on international flights too where airline staff will say that your certification is 10 minutes late etc. There should be standardised rules. We have written to the government to make the rules standard and that there should be a common platform online where domestic passengers will be able to see all the information on travel rules."

An AAI official said the issue has not come out much in Chennai because flight cancellations are rare as services are fewer and airlines schedule services carefully.

How vaccine misinformation keeps growing in India

How vaccine misinformation keeps growing in India

Using multiple platforms and tricks to beat moderators, anti-vaxxers are spreading rumours about people turning impotent or magnetic after jabs

Sonam.Joshi@timesgroup.com

28.06.2021 

On June 9, Nashik resident Jayant Sonar saw the video of a man in Delhi who claimed to have acquired magnetic powers after getting vaccinated. Sonar stuck some coins, steel spoons and plates on his 72-year-old father Arvind, who had got his second jab a week earlier, though the same trick didn’t work on his vaccinated mother. The video went viral even though several experts pointed out that it was simple surface tension on moist skin that was causing some objects to stick.

In many ways, Sonar’s case is a classic example of how misinformation can grow around a kernel of truth and spawn a whole tide of untruths that finds its way into people’s minds through social media videos and forwards. According to recent research by BBC Monitoring, anti-vaccination pages in India grew by 50% in 2020, faster than 2018 and 2019.

TOI found a Google document, Twitter handle and Telegram channel counting ‘Covid-19 vaccine deaths in India’ from anecdotal and unverified sources. Vaccine-related misinformation is often closely intertwined with a range of conspiracy theories about “a new world order” and hidden “agenda”. It can vary from claims that vaccines don’t work to fear-provoking videos about vaccines containing tracking devices or altering our DNA. “Negative social media posts about vaccines have brought a troubling escalation of the anti-vaccine movement,” says Syed Nazakat, founder, Health Analytics Asia. He points out that the problem is not just that people believe these false claims. “It’s also making them less likely to accept truthful information,” he says.

Anti-vax messages are also being given a dangerous religious spin. A series of false online posts claimed that Covaxin contained cow blood based on an RTI filed by a person named Vikas Patni. On his social media channels, 30-year-old Patni describes himself as a ‘gausewak’. He has shared several vaccine conspiracy posts in the past, such as vaccines being a part of Microsoft founder Bill Gates’ depopulation agenda. The government was forced to issue clarifications on the RTI and the Covaxin manufacturing process.

To beat moderation algorithms, some YouTubers resort to code words like ‘CV’ instead of coronavirus or ‘vaxx’ in place of vaccine. Anti-vaccine groups and pages often have backup accounts, and even if one gets banned, another one pops up. Similarly, if a video is removed from YouTube, it can still be circulated on Facebook and Telegram groups.

Many manipulate news reports, headlines and photos without context. In one video, a YouTuber ‘Abbey The Great!’ with over 28,000 followers attributes a popular Tamil actor’s death to taking a Covid vaccine the day before without mentioning the fact that he had a heart problem.

Ironically, Nashik’s Sonar says he didn’t want to spread an anti-vaccine message but just find out why this was happening to his father. In fact, he credits vaccines for protecting his parents, when the family got Covid during the second wave in April, and his wife and child had to be hospitalised. “We appeal that people should take the vaccine and it is safe,” he says.

The magnet theory that Sonar fell for has its roots abroad, which isn’t unusual. Indian anti-vaxxer pages and groups frequently share vaccine misinformation from international groups. TOI also found videos from Kamalpreet Singh, a South Asian anti-vaxxer in Canada who claims to be a nutritionist and influenza care specialist. Singh makes videos in Hindi, English and Punjabi which allege that the Covid vaccines lack long-term safety data and may have side effects in the future.

“Misinformation doesn’t respect geographical, cultural or national boundaries,” points out Nazakat. “A rumour can start in Europe or in Africa and can instantly reach India and become viral here or it can happen the other way around.” For example, Microsoft’s Gates is central to many vaccine conspiracies around the world and in India.

However, misinformation can also be steeped in local insecurities. According to Anoushka Jha of Digital Empowerment Foundation, which has been running vaccination drives at over 1,000 digital rural centres across India, population control fears are rife. “People believe that the government wants to control the population, so they are forcing them to get vaccinated,” she says, adding that WhatsApp and Facebook are often sources of such rumours.

In the village of Bansa in Uttar Pradesh, similar conspiracies have been doing the rounds. Jatin Lalit Singh, founder of Bansa Community Library, which has been helping villagers enrol for vaccination, says that some believe that the fever caused as a short-term side-effect of the vaccines will cause their death. “Others fear they might become impotent or blind in the future,” he says.

Nazakat says that this misinformation has been fuelled by information deficit. Unscientific claims and statements by prominent people also created distrust. “During the second wave, people were desperately looking for accurate information, but there was an information vacuum and rumours took over,” he says.

RUMOUR MILL: Nashik-based Arvind Sonar’s family tried sticking spoons on him after seeing a similar video online

To beat moderation algorithms, anti-vaxxers use code words like ‘CV’ instead of coronavirus or ‘vaxx’ in place of vaccine. They also have backup accounts, so if one gets banned, another one pops up

Airfares for Aug-Oct drop as carriers eye early bookings

Airfares for Aug-Oct drop as carriers eye early bookings

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Mumbai:28.06.2021 

Conventionally, airfares cool in June and July. This year, fares are high as government hiked its lowest fare cap by around 15% for travel in June-July. The drop in Covid cases brought about a spike in demand for air travel, and what you have is the cheapest fare, say on the Mumbai-Delhi route, priced over Rs 10,000, even for travel late next month. But for August, the cheapest return fare on a Mumbai-Delhi flight is Rs 4,600. A similar fare drop can be seen across most domestic sectors.

On sale or not, most airlines have put out cheap fares for travel in August-October to rake in much-needed forward booking revenue.

Among routes on which fares dropped considerably from August, compared to June-July, are those from Mumbai to Kolkata, Srinagar, Chennai, Kochi, Varanasi and Lucknow. The cheapest return fare to fly from Mumbai to Srinagar is over Rs 15,000 for the next five weeks, but for August, the fare starts at Rs 8,300. Alliance Air, Vistara and SpiceJet offered monsoon sale schemes last week, though airfares for August-October are low across most airlines.

But if there is one reason to not book now, it’s uncertainty over the third Covid wave. Airlines have considered that. “In the monsoon sale, most airlines are offering one date change free depending on the sector and fare category, due to lockdown,” said Jay Bhatia, vicepresident of Travel Agents’ Association of India. “It’s always easy to change bookings and obtain refunds when the ticket is booked through travel agents. Travellers are tired of staying home and are ready to holiday or commence business flights on completion of two shots of the vaccine,’’ he said. Another incentive is that airfares from August are not yet capped.

Passengers undergo Covid-19 tests upon arrival at the Birsa Munda International Airport in Ranchi on Saturday

Bonded doctors challenge govt’s FIR diktat

Bonded doctors challenge govt’s FIR diktat

Move HC Against Covid Duty Call

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Ahmedabad:28.06.2021

A group of 251 postgraduate and super-specialty doctors practising in Gujarat have approached the Gujarat high court challenging the state government’s decision to join them in Covid-19 duty and filing FIRs against them for not responding to the call of duty.

These doctors are bonded doctors, who studied in government medical colleges and were under obligation to serve in rural areas for few years after completion of their studies or else they should surrender the bond amount in lieu of the rural service.

The high court is likely to hear their case on Monday.

On May 4, following the surge in Covid-19 cases and falling short of human resource in dealing with the crisis, the state government took a decision to recruit bonded doctors as medical specialist Class –1 in Covid facilities from May 7. There were 1,415 such doctors who were called for Covid duty and nearly 1,000 doctors failed to report. The state health commissioner on June 20 ordered chief district health officers and the medical officers in corporations to file FIRs under the Epidemic Diseases Act, 1897 against 799 doctors who did not respond to the government’s call and for their failure to discharge their moral obligation to serve the society after having taken the benefit of the subsidised education in government medical colleges.

On June 21, the state government decided that the bonds submitted by the bonded doctors would not be received. Moreover, the health authorities were asked to issue show-cause notices to the doctors.

The petitioners have urged the HC to quashed the order for registration of FIRs against bonded doctors, to junk the order to assign Covid-19 duty to them and show-cause notices issued by the authorities. They have also demanded that the National Medical Council should formulate a pan-India policy regarding compulsory service bonds.

In a petition filed through advocates Angesh and Amit Panchal, the bonded doctors have contended that they are unable to meet the additional obligations under the bond and therefore requested to submit the bond amount, but the government refused to accept it.

The bonded doctors have raised a contention that both the state government and petitioners are bound by the terms of the bond. There is no clause in the contract that the state government would refuse to accept the bond amount. The refusal is unreasonable. By threatening criminal action, the attempt to enforce the contract for personal service is a violation of Article 23 of the Constitution.

The bonded doctors have also questioned why the state government chose to assign Covid-19 duty to only those medical professionals who studied medicine in the government colleges. Two more petitions have been filed by the doctors.

There were 1,415 such doctors who were called for Covid duty and nearly 1,000 doctors failed to turn up. The government reacted with an order to lodge FIRs

FOREIGN DEGREES OF UNCERTAINTY COLLEGE EXAMS AWAITED

FOREIGN DEGREES OF UNCERTAINTY COLLEGE EXAMS AWAITED

Overseas studies, mark-sheet turbulence

Bharat.Yagnik@timesgroup.com

Ahmedabad:28.06.2021

With universities planning to hold college exams for final year students from the first week of July, students planning to go overseas are a worried lot as colleges there will open in September.

Rohan Sheth, a final year IT student from Silver Oaks College of Engineering and Technology, Ahmedabad, has finalized his plans for New Jersey in US for a postgraduate in computer science. He has enrolled in a college . But his visa procedure is stuck and cannot be completed before August it seems.

“To get my visa, I need my final semester mark-sheet. The exams will be held in July and the marksheet will come later. My plans depend on timely holding of the exams,” said Sheth.

Maulin Joshi, who runs a consultancy firm said the delay in college exams due to Covid-19 is impacting the overseas plans of many students.

“Especially those students whose academic performance depends on their final semester results are in a lot of stress. For students who wish to go overseas before the academic session starts in September, all the preparations including visa approvals should be in place by July 15,” said Joshi.

Most of the universities in Gujarat have planned to conduct final year exams for undergraduate and postgraduate students from July 6 to July 15. It would take another 15-20 days for the results to be prepared and given to the students. Many students have received inprinciple approval from overseas colleges and universities for further studies, but a final call is taken only after the final semester results are declared and mark-sheets produced.

Mili Vakil, a student of integrated BA-LLB at GLS Law College, is looking at a stressful timeline between appearing for her final sixth semester exam slated on July 6 and getting her student visa for her master’s in law course from University of Birmingham, UK.

Her course starts from September. Vakil says she has her fingers crossed to complete theexhaustive paperwork needed to start her foreign studies.

“There is a long journey ahead which includes appearing for the exam in July, getting marksheet, receiving transcript, provisional degree certificate, other documents, and confirmation from the university for student visa,” said Vakil.

Vakil’s friend Tanzim Surani who is also headed to the UK says she is hoping she can start her foreign studies in September.

Doctor sends legal notice to govt opposing mandatory vax

Doctor sends legal notice to govt opposing mandatory vax

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

28.06.2021 

A Mangaluru-based physician has sent a legal notice to the state government, seeking that vaccination of students, faculty and other staff should not be made mandatory or a pre-requisite for resuming physical classes in schools and colleges. Dr B Srinivas Kakkilaya argued that “imposing” vaccine would be a violation of fundamental rights of individuals.

Last month, Kakkilaya was booked under Karnataka Epidemic Diseases Act for refusing to wear a mask in a supermarket and arguing with staff when they insisted. He said he had been treating Covid patients and that the government had made “foolish rules”.

Advocate Chidanand Kedilaya sent the notice on behalf of Kakkilaya and three others, including a BA student and parents of children studying in class 10. The notice, sent to the chief minister, chief secretary, health secretary, deputy CM Dr Ashwath Narayana and education minister Suresh Kumar, requested them to take emergent steps for reopening of schools and colleges without any further delay. It warned of initiating proceedings against the government in case it goes ahead with the vaccination mandate with students.

“There are several reports which clearly suggest that majority of citizens, be it in India or abroad, have already been infected by Covid and most of them without showing any symptoms have recovered. Reports also suggested that a person once infected will develop immunity against infection from coronavirus,” the notice said. “The state government is contemplating to impose vaccination as a prerequisite for the opening of schools and colleges, (it) is not in the interest of students nor any such decisions could have any legal sanction. It is a violation of the fundamental right of the individual (be it students, teaching or non-teaching staff)...’’

Maha & Kerala travellers can show vax cert to enter Karnataka

Maha & Kerala travellers can show vax cert to enter Karnataka

Bengaluru:28.06.2021 

Travellers from Maharashtra and Kerala, who had to furnish a negative RT-PCR report to enter Karnataka, can alternatively produce a vaccination certificate. The state will soon issue an additional order, in view of increasing vaccination in both states.

“We are trying to curb the virus spread and have taken a decision that an RT-PCR negative certificate for travellers from these states is mandatory. However, any person who has received at least one dose can produce his or her certificate issued via Co-Win and enter the state,” said chief secretary P Ravi Kumar. TNN

ENTRY INTO K’TAKA

BBMP desks set up at KIA, bus and railway stations

The order is expected in a day or two, Ravi told TOI on Sunday. Border checks were strengthened in view of rising Delta and Delta plus Covid cases in the neighbouring states.

Earlier in the day, BBMP chief commissioner and member of the Covid-19 task force Gaurav Gupta said either of the documents must be furnished to enter the state. Since there is unrestricted movement of people from Maharashtra to Belagavi, Kalaburagi, Vijayapura etc the government has decided to enforce this rule to control the spread of the virus,” he said. In Bengaluru, Gupta said the BBMP has set up special desks at the airport (KIA), Kempegowda bus station and Sangolli Rayanna railway station to conduct tests and keep track of those who enter the city.