Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh wrote a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday suggesting five ways to fight the pandemic stressing that the expansion of Covid vaccination programme forms a big part of the pandemic management and we resist the temptation to look at absolute numbers vaccinated and instead focus on percentage of population vaccinated.
The five-point remedy are as below:
- Publicise Covid vaccine orders placed for next 6 months
The government should publicise what are the firm orders for doses placed on different vaccine producers and accepted for delivery over the next six months. If we want to vaccinate a target number in this period, we should place enough orders in advance so that producers can adhere to an agreed schedule of supply,” Manmohan Singh said.
- Indicate how this expected supply will be distributed across states
The government should indicate how this expected supply will be distributed across states based on a transparent formula. The central government could retain 10 per cent for distribution based on emergency needs, but other than that, states should have a clear signal of likely availability so that they can plan their roll out,” he said.
- States should be given some flexibility to define frontline workers’
Manmohan suggested that the Centre should allow state governments some freedom to define frontline workers, who can be vaccinated even if they are under the age of 45.
“For example, states may want to designate school teachers, bus, three-wheeler and taxi drivers, municipal and panchayat staff, and possibly lawyers who have to attend Courts as frontline workers. They can then be vaccinated even if they are below 45,” he suggested.
- Support vaccine producers to expand their manufacturing facilities
He suggested that the centre must proactively support vaccine producers to expand their manufacturing facilities quickly by providing funds and other concessions.
“I believe this is the time to invoke the compulsory licensing provisions in the law, so that a number of companies are able to produce the vaccines under a license. This, I recall, had happened earlier in the case of medicines to deal with the HIV/AIDS disease,” he said.
- Any vaccine that has been cleared for use should be allowed to be imported
“Since domestic supplies are limited, any vaccine that has been cleared for use by credible authorities such as the European Medical Agency or the USFDA, should be allowed to be imprted without insisting on domestic bridging trials,” he said.
Silent hypoxia, a condition when oxygen levels in the body are abnormally low, biomedical engineers used computer modeling to test out three different scenarios that help explain how and why the lungs stop providing oxygen to the bloodstream.
Many puzzling aspects of how the novel coronavirus attacks the lungs and other parts of the body, is still a matter of concern for scientist. The biggest and most life-threatening mysteries is how the virus causes “silent hypoxia,” a condition when oxygen levels in the body are abnormally low, which can irreparably damage vital organs if gone undetected for too long. Now, thanks to computer models and comparisons with real patient data, Boston University biomedical engineers and collaborators from the University of Vermont have begun to crack the mystery.
Despite experiencing dangerously low levels of oxygen, many people infected with severe cases of COVID-19 sometimes show no symptoms of shortness of breath or difficulty breathing. Hypoxia’s ability to quietly inflict damage is why it’s been coined “silent.” In coronavirus patients, it’s thought that the infection first damages the lungs, rendering parts of them incapable of functioning properly. Those tissues lose oxygen and stop working, no longer infusing the blood stream with oxygen, causing silent hypoxia. But exactly how that domino effect occurs has not been clear until now.
“We didn’t know [how this] was physiologically possible,” says Bela Suki, a BU College of Engineering professor of biomedical engineering and of materials science and engineering and one of the authors of the study. Some coronavirus patients have experienced what some experts have described as levels of blood oxygen that are “incompatible with life.” Disturbingly, Suki says, many of these patients showed little to no signs of abnormalities when they underwent lung scans.
To help get to the bottom of what causes silent hypoxia, BU biomedical engineers used computer modeling to test out three different scenarios that help explain how and why the lungs stop providing oxygen to the bloodstream. Their research, which has been published in Nature Communications, reveals that silent hypoxia is likely caused by a combination of biological mechanisms that may occur simultaneously in the lungs of COVID-19 patients, according to biomedical engineer Jacob Herrmann, a research postdoctoral associate in Suki’s lab and the lead author of the new study.
Normally, the lungs perform the life-sustaining duty of gas exchange, providing oxygen to every cell in the body as we breathe in and ridding us of carbon dioxide each time we exhale. Healthy lungs keep the blood oxygenated at a level between 95 and 100 percent – if it dips below 92 percent, it’s a cause for concern and a doctor might decide to intervene with supplemental oxygen. (Early in the coronavirus pandemic, when clinicians first started sounding the alarm about silent hypoxia, oximeters flew off store shelves as many people, worried that they or their family members might have to recover from milder cases of coronavirus at home, wanted to be able to monitor their blood oxygen levels.)
The researchers first looked at how COVID-19 impacts the lungs’ ability to regulate where blood is directed. Normally, if areas of the lung aren’t gathering much oxygen due to damage from infection, the blood vessels will constrict in those areas. This is actually a good thing that our lungs have evolved to do, because it forces blood to instead flow through lung tissue replete with oxygen, which is then circulated throughout the rest of the body.
But according to Herrmann, preliminary clinical data have suggested that the lungs of some COVID-19 patients had lost the ability of restricting blood flow to already damaged tissue, and in contrast, were potentially opening up those blood vessels even more – something that is hard to see or measure on a CT scan.
Using a computational lung model, Herrmann, Suki, and their team tested that theory, revealing that for blood oxygen levels to drop to the levels observed in COVID-19 patients, blood flow would indeed have to be much higher than normal in areas of the lungs that can no longer gather oxygen – contributing to low levels of oxygen throughout the entire body, they say.
Next, they looked at how blood clotting may impact blood flow in different regions of the lung. When the lining of blood vessels get inflamed from COVID-19 infection, tiny blood clots too small to be seen on medical scans can form inside the lungs. They found, using computer modeling of the lungs, that this could incite silent hypoxia, but alone it is likely not enough to cause oxygen levels to drop as low as the levels seen in patient data.
Last, the researchers used their computer model to find out if COVID-19 interferes with the normal ratio of air-to-blood flow that the lungs need to function normally. This type of mismatched air-to-blood flow ratio is something that happens in many respiratory illnesses, such as with asthma patients, Suki says, and it can be a possible contributor to the severe, silent hypoxia that has been observed in COVID-19 patients. Their models suggest that for this to be a cause of silent hypoxia, the mismatch must be happening in parts of the lung that don’t appear injured or abnormal on lung scans.
Altogether, their findings suggest that a combination of all three factors are likely to be responsible for the severe cases of low oxygen in some COVID-19 patients. By having a better understanding of these underlying mechanisms, and how the combinations could vary from patient to patient, clinicians can make more informed choices about treating patients using measures like ventilation and supplemental oxygen. A number of interventions are currently being studied, including a low-tech intervention called prone positioning that flips patients over onto their stomachs, allowing for the back part of the lungs to pull in more oxygen and evening out the mismatched air-to-blood ratio.
“Different people respond to this virus so differently,” says Suki. For clinicians, he says it’s critical to understand all the possible reasons why a patient’s blood oxygen might be low, so that they can decide on the proper form of treatment, including medications that could help constrict blood vessels, bust blood clots, or correct a mismatched air-to-blood flow ratio.
India’s cumulative vaccination coverage nears 12 crores with over 30 lakh doses given in the last 24 hours.
A total of 11,99,37,641 Vaccine doses have been given as per provisional report by the Health Ministry of India.
30,04,544 inoculations were done in the last 24 hours as on day 91 of the vaccination drive.
New cases in the last 24 hours: 2,34,692
Total deaths in 24 hours: 1,341
Dr Harsh Vardhan, Union Health Minister, chaired a high-level meeting with 11 health ministers of worst-hit states on Saturday to review the current Covid situation.
“We can focus on bigger containment zones which can be called community quarantine to change the strategy,” the minister said as he addressed the meeting through video conferencing.
Clarifying how the Centre supplies vaccines to the states, the minister said that large states get 4 days’ supply together while for smaller states, it is seven days’ supply. “So either on every 4th day or every 7th day, vaccines are being supplied.”
Urging states to send more samples for genome sequencing, the health minister said, “We have been doing genome sequencing before this UK variant same to the world’s notice. We have been doing everything required to bring the situation under control. This year, we have vaccine to bolster our fight.”
Two doctors, father and son, from Kalyan died due to coronavirus while the mother is serious in a Vasai based hospital. The father and son duo had been involved in Covid care for a year.
The family members were admitted in different municipal corporation areas, reports TOI. While Dr Nagendra (58) was admitted in Thane’s Vedanta Hospital, his son got a private bed in Goregaon. TOI further reports that the mother is admitted in a hospital in Vasai-Virar region.
It is still uncertain if the father son duo received vaccine shots.
To improve the immunity levels during covid times it’s important to have adequate doses of vitamin D adequate doses of vitamin C&B complex supplements also pre and probiotics naturally occurring pre and probiotics are in yogurt as well as curd yakult is another supplement available in the market you can have that and kimchi which is a Korean salad is a fermented Korean salad is again something good which can give us probiotics which are helping the market which you can pick up and have one to improve your immunity vitamin C is very important.
It’s important to understand that vitamin C is got from oranges, grapes kivi and other citrus fruits. Vitamin C supplements in the form of celecelin, juicy, Limsey can also be had once a day, 500 milligrams of vitamin C per day is important for us vitamin D, if you are low in vitamin D then also are immunity goes down, So to improve the vitamin it’s important to understand have certain amount of sunlight getting into our system maybe 25 minutes per day if it cannot happen then go for supplements which are available in the market in the form of a uprize D or depura which you can have once.
60,000 units once a week it improves your vitamin D. B complex in the form of capsules available in the market are there zinc is a very important feature to fight the covid. Zinc is available in various fruits as well as vegetables but it’s also more so found in seafood and zinc it is found in the form of a zincovit or zinckonia supplements so you can have more of them.
Fitness is very important if you’re walking wearing a mask for those 30 or more minutes this also improves immunity level.
Credits: Dr Suneet Khanna
A pharma company owner has been arrested by the Indore Crime Branch on Thursday for allegedly selling fake Remdesivir injections.
The accused is a resident of Indore’s Rani Bagh and a case has been registered against him under various sections including fraud, reports ANI.
“Around 400 Remdesivir vials have been recovered from the accused car’s, which were found to be fake after being investigated by the drug department. He owns a pharma company in Indore’s Pithampura. He planned to take advantage of the drug shortage and make money,” Guru Prasad Parashar, additional Superintendent of Police, Crime Branch said.
The police officer added the drugs were manufactured at a pharma unit in Himachal Pradesh, ANI reports.