-The Telegraph Omicron makes up 80 per cent of cases in Delhi, Mumbai; Bengal logs highest test positivity rate India is in the middle of a Covid-19 surge that’s rising exponentially and can’t be reined in by booster shots at this stage, says a leading virologist. “For this wave, we are too late. Nothing will now rein it in,” says virologist T. Jacob John. We could see the Omicron surge play out two...
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Government used ‘Indian double mutant strain’ in affidavit filed in Supreme Court -Krishnadas Rajagopal
-The Hindu It officially objected to affixing nationality to the virus variant later The government used the term “Indian double mutant strain” in an affidavit filed in the Supreme Court just days before it officially objected to affixing nationality to the virus variant. A May 9 affidavit refers to “Indian double mutant strain” while detailing the steps taken by the Indian Council of Medical Research and the National Institute of Virology to develop...
More »A disaster in the making -A Rangarajan
-Frontline Medecins Sans Frontieres warns that the free or regional trade agreements that are being negotiated, which seek to strengthen current patent regimes, are a potential threat to the developing world’s access to life-saving drugs, which it sources mostly from India. WHEN NELSON MANDELA’S GOVERNMENT passed the Medicines and Related Substances Control Act in 1997 to make medicines more accessible to the poor, 39 big pharmaceutical companies filed law suits in...
More »Patent to plunder -Amit Sengupta
India's efforts to produce and supply life-saving drugs at affordable prices face challenges from multinational companies trying to “evergreen” their patents. THE average life expectancy across the globe has increased from around 30 years a century ago to over 65 years today. This has been made possible in large part by modern medicine. Never before in history have humans had access to such an array of medicines and devices to...
More »Rust in the bread basket
A crop-killing fungus is spreading out of Africa towards the world’s great wheat-growing areas IT IS sometimes called the “polio of agriculture”: a terrifying but almost forgotten disease. Wheat rust is not just back after a 50-year absence, but spreading in new and scary forms. In some ways it is worse than child-crippling polio, still lingering in parts of Nigeria. Wheat rust has spread silently and speedily by 5,000 miles in...
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