#It’s a deal: The World Trade Organization concluded deals Friday on tackling food insecurity, curbing harmful fishing subsidies and temporarily waiving Covid-19 vaccine patents after days of round-the-clock talks.
#Covaxin in kids: Bharat Biotech has said that Covaxin, its whole-virion inactivated Covid-19 vaccine candidate, has proven to be safe, well-tolerated, and highly immunogenic in paediatric subjects in phase II/III study.
#Friday review: India’s Covid genome sequencing facility, the Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium (Insacog), will review data to look into reasons for “breakthrough” Covid infections and also check on possibility of virus sub-lineages or new variants. The review meeting is scheduled on Friday, sources in the Health Ministry told BusinessLine.
#Daily tally: India reported 12,847 new cases in the last 24 hours, and 14 deaths.
#Kerala surge: Kerala has continued to lead the rest of the States both in the number of daily new Covid-19 cases and the test positivity rate (TPR) as a runaway spiral in infection, kicking off from just around the time of school reopening, has shown no signs of relent.
#TN crosses 500: New Covid cases in Tamil Nadu on Thursday crossed the 500-mark to 552 taking the total number to 34,58,997. No Covid deaths were reported.
#Under pressure: The fiscal conditions among States in India are showing warning signs of stress, with a Reserve Bank of India article identifying Bihar, Kerala, Punjab, Rajasthan, and West Bengal as highly distressed States among 10 States with the highest debt burden, going by the debt/GSDP ratio. Stretched State government finances exacerbated by Covid-19, is one of the reasons the article mentions.
#Chips are down: The Russia-Ukraine war has crippled the supply chain of semiconductors and pushed up gas prices, while the resurgence of Covid-19 has led to lockdowns in Chinese cities, all of which could impact business, warned Tata Motors in its latest annual report.
#Turn to spices: A Covid-influenced trend for the industry to capitalise on is to stress medical properties and potential health benefits that spices such as turmeric, ginger and cinnamon offer.