Hetero has priced the injectable drug at Rs 5,400 per 100 mg vial. With More drugmakers in line to launch the drug soon, the prices may see a further erosion.
The apex health research body on Tuesday validated the 1,000th testing laboratory, ramping up the capacity for detection of COVID-19 in the country. Currently, three lakh samples can be tested per day, an official said.
Discussing the prospect of more reform earlier this month, telecom minister Ashwini Vaishnaw announced a delay in the 5G spectrum auction. India's telecom sector regulation has to be benchmarked with the global best, he said. It's another matter that many countries have either introduced or are about to roll out 5G services that will enable cutting-edge tech in diverse areas. For India, too, it will mean a lot for healthcare, robotics and unleashing a new chapter in Digital India perhaps.
FabiFlu is the first oral favipiravir-approved medication in India for the treatment of COVID-19. Favipiravir can be used for coronavirus patients with co-morbid conditions such as diabetes and heart disease with mild to moderate COVID-19 symptoms.
Rai said as informed by the health ministry, the central government has been providing required technical and financial assistance to all states and Union Territories (UTs) for strengthening their healthcare system, including management of the COVID-19 public health challenge, from time to time, and the financial assistance to states and UTs is provided under the National Health Mission (NHM).
According to Niti Aayog Member V K Paul, India is in a somewhat better position now but the country still has a long way to go because 90 per cent of the people are still susceptible to coronavirus infections.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday inaugurated the 6th India Mobile Congress at Pragati Maidan in Delhi and launched 5G services. The 5G telecom services seek to provide seamless coverage, high data rate, low latency and highly reliable communications system. The three major telecom operators of the country demonstrated one use case each in front of the prime minister to show the potential of 5G technology in India.
The health ID will contain information about medical data, prescriptions and diagnostic reports and summaries of previous discharge from hospitals for ailments. The mission is expected to bring efficiency and transparency in healthcare services in the country.
In the Rome Declaration, the G20 leaders thanked healthcare and frontline workers, international organisations and scientists for their relentless efforts to cope with the deadly COVID-19 pandemic.
Pfizer's chief executive Dr Albert Bourla told the BBC that he is of the view that annual vaccinations would be needed to maintain a "very high level of protection" against the deadly disease that has claimed over five million lives across the world.
No expecting mother ever needs to travel for more than 30 minutes to reach one of their hospitals, believes the Cloudnine group.
'If there is anyone who is a victim of vendetta politics, it is me.'
Aspada Investment Company received the $10 million commitment from the SEDF and will in turn make education, healthcare, and financial services more accessible to low- income people in India and would also invest in agricultural supply chain companies in an effort to support small holder farmers, a company statement said.
The acquisition has opened a market to 245,000 healthcare providers, 350 payers (insurance firms) and 180 million lives.
'At the current time, we should be vaccinating all those who are potentially going to get more severe illness, before we start vaccinating very young individuals.'
Responding to another question, Choubey said that the phase-I of clinical trials have revealed excellent safety of the two candidate vaccines indigenously developed by Bharat Biotech in collaboration with Indian Council of Medical Research and Cadila Healthcare Ltd, and now their immunogenicity testing is in progress. Their phase II clinical trials are ongoing.
Earlier in April, Pfizer said that it had offered a not-for-profit price for its vaccine for the government immunisation programme in India and it remains committed to continuing engagement with the government to make the vaccine available in India.
'We are the only country in the world where everybody gets a digital vaccination certificate immediately... Then as we open up, as they did yesterday, which I think is a welcome move, you will have lots and lots of points where people will come in'
Five years after demonetisation, which sought to curb black money and reduce cash circulation in the economy, 70 per cent of respondents said they paid a large component of the total payment towards a real estate transaction in cash. About 16 per cent said they paid over half the amount in cash, observes Shyamal Majumdar.
States and Union Territories would aggregate the demand of private hospitals for COVID-19 vaccines based on which the Centre will facilitate supply to these governments for timely and equitable distribution to smaller and remoter private healthcare facilities, according to the revised guidelines issued.
'There are only two bottlenecks for universal vaccination.' 'One, is availability of the vaccine.' 'Two, is the logistics for administering the vaccine.'
'he Centre has not issued any mandate, the stand of centre is that it should be 100 per cent but it is not a mandate'
The Centre on Thursday advised states slated to hold assembly polls in the next few months to ramp up COVID vaccination exponentially to protect the vulnerable population given the steady rise in cases of the Omicron variant of coronavirus in India.
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Navarino Narah, a travel and luxury boutique hotels consultant from Arunachal Pradesh, tells Rediff.com's A Ganesh Nadar what he would like to see in Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman's Budget.
'You could have an additional pool of 15,000-odd qualified and competent doctors.'
If the Personal Data Protection Bill gets passed in its present form, a new class of companies and entities could emerge. The sole job of these new entities would be to manage the consent for data usage of a user.Banks, healthcare firms and fintech companies, among others, fear that sharing non-personal data with the government may hurt business interests. Banks also fear the threat of data misuse.
After losing his driver to Covid, Ahmedabad engineer Shivam Dhruva felt the need to build an app that will provide latest medical updates at the click of a button, free of cost.
'We hope that the situation in Afghanistan does not pose a challenge to its neighbours and its territory is not used by terrorist groups'
AI tech that study CT scans and X-Rays are being deployed as part of global efforts to tackle the coronavirus pandemic, according to LPU researchers. The system may enable doctors and medical staff even in remotest villages of the country to get quick results on the COVID-19 status of a patient.
Public sector banks, including the country's largest lender State Bank of India (SBI), have come out with a templated approach for restructuring retail and small business loans of up to Rs 25 crore under the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) Covid restructuring package 2.0. They have also come out with standardised products to make funds available to business entities for improving healthcare infrastructure and to individuals for meeting Covid treatment expenses. Business loans have been divided into three categories.
Vardhan stated the government is taking full precautions in human trials of vaccines and the National Expert Group on Vaccine Administration for COVID-19 under the chairmanship of Dr V K Paul, member-health, NITI Aayog, is drawing up a detailed strategy on how to immunize the majority of the population.
Ten days after Hizbul Mujahideen leader Burhan Wani was eliminated by the armed forces, Kashmir continues to see massive unrest, with the violence claiming over 40 lives.
The problem, says Chandrasekaran, arises from the lack of access to services, including healthcare, education and financial services.
Reserve Bank on Wednesday announced a slew of measures including loan restructuring for individual and small businesses hit hard by fresh COVID-19 wave. To augment supply of goods for COVID care, the central bank opened Rs 50,000 crore on-tap window to ease access to emergency health services to boost provision of immediate liquidity for ramping up COVID-19 related healthcare infrastructure and services in the country. This liquidity window is being opened till March 31, 2022, he said, adding that under the scheme, banks can provide fresh lending support to a wide ranging of entities including vaccine manufacturers, importers and suppliers of vaccine and medical devices, hospitals and dispensaries and suppliers of oxygen and ventilators importers and also patients for treatment.
Over the next five years, it will be Narendra not Nitish who will be under pressure to deliver vikas and atmanirbharta in Bihar, notes Kanika Datta.
Biden expressed the support of the US to India in a telephonic conversation with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, during which the two leaders discussed the pandemic situation in their countries, including India's ongoing efforts to contain a second wave of COVID-19 through expedited vaccination efforts, and ensuring supply of critical medicines, therapeutics and medical equipment.
European cities offer the best quality of life.
The prime minister also visited the Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital in New Delhi after the milestone was achieved and interacted with hospital officials.
To date, USAID has provided $5.9 million to assist India in responding to the COVID-19 outbreak.