The joint secretary also said a high-level task force to work on frontiers of science related to vaccines and drug testing was formed on Sunday.
The dinner Jill Biden and her husband US President Joe Biden hosted for Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, June 22, at the White House brought together, Indians and Americans from so many firmaments.
In Jaipur, the combination of lopinavir and ritonavir, both second-line HIV drugs, was administered was administered on an elderly Italian couple undergoing treatment for Covid-19 at the SMS Hospital.
Why did the department and his colleagues not stop this 'rogue' officer from implicating an innocent man while the entire nation was watching for weeks? The answer is they either approved, or disapproved and refused to intervene or they didn't care, notes Aakar Patel.
The central government has for the first time allowed a private company, Bajaj Healthcare, to process opium to extract alkaloids used to make pain-killers, cough syrups, and even cancer drugs. Two government factories in Ghazipur, Uttar Pradesh, and Neemuch, Madhya Pradesh, do the work yet, processing some 800 tonnes of opium gum annually to extract alkaloids. The government on Tuesday gave Thane-based Bajaj Healthcare an initial contract to process 500 tonnes of opium gum annually and wants production to be at 800 tonnes per annum (tpa) in the next five years, indicating the state's exit from the highly-regulated sector.
The Serum Institute of India, the largest vaccine maker in the world, has been chosen by Oxford and its partner AstraZeneca to manufacture the vaccine once it is ready. Trials results for the first two phases were published earlier this month.
Addressing a press briefing, Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan said healthcare workers and frontline workers need not register themselves as their database has been populated on to the Co-WIN vaccine delivery management system in a bulk manner.
While Ramdev claimed that Ayurved-based 'Coronil and Swasari' medicine have shown 100 per cent favourable results during clinical trials on COVID-19 infected patients except those on a life support system, the Ayush Ministry sought from the company detailed report on composition, testing and other data of the drugs.
Maharashtra NCP minister Nawab Malik on Monday claimed that Narcotics Control Bureau's zonal director Sameer Wankhede used forged documents including his birth certificate. Wankhede, an IRS officer of the 2008 batch, slammed the minister, saying his action was defamatory in nature and an invasion of his family's privacy.
"Is there a rule of law or (a rule of) raids in Maharashtra? This is the question which comes to one's mind considering the record-break raids being conducted through Central investigating agencies," Raut wrote in the weekly column 'Rokhthok' in the Sena mouthpiece 'Saamana' of which he is the executive editor.
The Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA) has imposed a penalty of Rs 1 lakh on e-commerce major Amazon for selling pressure cookers that did not meet quality standards. The CCPA also directed Amazon to notify the consumers of all these 2,265 pressure cookers sold through its platform, recall the products and reimburse the prices to buyers, the Department of Consumer Affairs said in a statement.
The transition of Class A and Class B medical device makers to the licensing regime by October 1 seems to be an uphill task with several small and medium manufacturers saying they are still awaiting the audit from the government authorities. If the licenses don't come through, either due to lack of audits or MSME units not clearing the audits, then a few thousand small-scale medical device units will face the issue of business continuity in three weeks. Class A medical devices are those with low to moderate risk to the patient or user (surgical dressings for example), while Class B medical devices refer to devices with moderate risks that require special controls (catheters for example).
The Bombay High Court on Friday said Aryan Khan, son of superstar Shah Rukh Khan, shall be released on a personal bond of Rs one lakh with one or two sureties of the same amount.
Last month, the US Food and Drugs Administration had placed Wockhardt's facilities in Waluj near Aurangabad on import alert, barring supply of various products from these facilities to the US.
The company claimed that the AYUSH ministry has "categorically agreed" that Patanjali had "appropriately worked on COVID-19 management".
These self-appointed well-wishers of AMU are basically for the control or police model of university governance. They have no faith whatsoever in the democratic functioning of the universities, observes Faizan Mustafa, former dean, Faculty of Law, and Registrar, Aligarh Muslim University.
In September, Bharat Biotech aimed to supply 35 million doses, and take this up to 55 million by October. This is still less than what the Indian government expects from the company.
'Don't panic. Believe in yourself.' 'This is a preventable illness. Only you can prevent it.'
Replying to a debate on law and order in the Lower House, Walse Patil said Pravin Chavan has resigned as the special public prosecutor.
On Tuesday, Rao said there was a possibility of the PM's visit to Pune, and if that happens, it would be aimed at reviewing the status of the vaccine candidate for coronavirus infection and to know about its launch, production and distribution mechanisms.
'We must not compromise with the standard, the quality. We don't need to be the first to launch a drug but what we need is a Made in India vaccine that the entire world can rely on'
'Almost 70 per cent production time of a vaccine is dedicated to quality control, which is done through several hundred tests.'
Launching a scathing attack on Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) Zonal Director Sameer Wankhede, Maharashtra minister and Nationalist Congress Party leader Nawab Malik on Thursday dubbed the officer as 'bogus' and asserted that once 'proof' against him is out, he can not remain in government service for even one day.
The move has left the Democrats fuming, asserting that the Pentagon didn't seek permission.
Rediff.com tries to recap the debate and presents the highlights from the event.
As cases of 'black fungus' among COVID-19 patients in the country rise to cross 7,000, the Centre on Thursday urged all states and union territories to declare it as a notifiable disease under the Epidemic Diseases Act to ensure mandatory surveillance to tackle the 'new challenge'.
'Testing is a very good strategy if only symptomatic people are transmitting the disease.' 'Here asymptomatic people, with minimum, trivial symptoms, are transmitting too.' 'Testing, treating, tracing contacts and quarantining them -- yes, it will work up to a certain extent.' 'But more important is physical distancing, hand hygiene, cough etiquette and cocooning, protecting with reverse quarantining the most vulnerable people, senior citizens, people with other major medical problems.' 'To me, that makes much more sense.'
India's first mRNA platform-based vaccine will remain stable at 2-8 degrees Celsius while Pfizer-BioNTech's vaccine needs minus 70 degrees Celsius and Moderna vaccine can remain stable for six months at minus 20 degrees Celsius, reports Sohini Das.
The presidential secretariat which was occupied by the protesters from July 9 till Friday last is re-opened and the staff reported to work on Monday, officials said.
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Thursday said dedicated centres will be set up for the treatment of black fungus or mucormycosis cases at three city government-run hospitals.
One Chinese source informed ANI that 10 million new infections are probably occurring daily in China.
Amid a surge in coronavirus cases, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Friday replaced his 'Team-11', a group of officials tasked with managing the crises, with a new nine-member set of ministers and bureaucrats.
The capability of drones to evade radar, wreak devastation at strategic installations and transport weapons to terrorists has been a continuous concern for the country's security establishment, and in a maiden incident, these unmanned vehicles were used to strike an Indian Air Force base in Jammu on Sunday, officials said.
Dr Zaheed Qureshi said that when his daughter Shabana married Sameer Wankhede, the latter practised Islam, and would occasionally visit mosques.
'In our country, there is a lot of checks and balances, the figures cannot go wrong.' 'Because they are being checked by not only the governments, but by doctors themselves.'
Some of the proposals (for example trade margin calculation for imported medical devices) were not approved by the PMO and were sent back for revisions.
'We can't rule out the fact that the virus might have changed in such a way that it's actually causing more harm to young people.'
The budgetary allocation for the sector is Rs 60,908.22 crore, with Rs 6,400 crore earmarked for the centre's flagship health insurance scheme Ayushman Bharat- Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojna (AB-PMJAY).
'Any person who wants to enter this service should have a single object of serving the public irrespective of hindrances.'
Addressing a press briefing, health ministry Joint Secretary Lav Agarwal said currently there are no approved therapies for COVID-19 and there is not enough evidence to claim that plasma therapy can be used for treatment of the disease.
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