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No, UP Police did not take away oxygen cylinder man arranged for his mother in critical condition for ‘VIP’, viral video claims fake

OpIndia Staff
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No, UP Police did not take away oxygen cylinder man arranged for his mother in critical condition for ‘VIP’, viral video claims fake

On Wednesday, Times of India journalist Deepak Lavania took to Twitter to share a video claiming that a man begged the police to not take away the cylinder he had arranged for his mother. He claimed that the police confiscated the oxygen cylinder from private hospital in Agra and ‘supplied it to a VIP’. He claimed that the incident took place on Tuesday evening.

Viral tweet claiming man begged to police for oxygen cylinder for his mother

In subsequent tweet, he claimed that the man and his mother who was in critical condition are no longer ‘traceable’.

However, the UP Police has refuted the claims.

In a byte, SP Agra said, that the above video is of Upadhyay Hospital. Due to shortage of oxygen cylinders in Agra few days back, some people were giving away their personal cylinders to hospitals for the treatment of the loved ones. The two people who are taking away the cylinder are actually taking away an empty cylinder. The man seen requesting the police is a kin of a COVID patient and was actually asking the cops to help him procure a cylinder for his mother.

Fake news amid COVID crisis

Earlier this week, a message had gone viral on social media which claimed that a girl from Ghaziabad had donated Rs 5,000 from her piggy bank to PM CARES fund but had herself died waiting for oxygen. However, the girl’s father revealed that his daughter is alive and healthy and discharged from hospital.

Amid the second wave of Chinese coronavirus pandemic, there has been an oxygen supply crisis in India. However, the same is being resolved as plants are diverted and making oxygen while India has also imported cryogenic tanks to help transport the oxygen across India. Indian Railways is also running special trains ‘Oxygen Express’ and the IAF has been airlifting oxygen to help resolve the crisis.

The claims that actual COVID-19 deaths in India are 10 times the reported numbers defy logic, circulated to spread panic

Kushal Mehra
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The claims that actual COVID-19 deaths in India are 10 times the reported numbers defy logic, circulated to spread panic

India is in the middle of its second wave and our social media feeds have morphed into SOS helplines with citizens running pillar to post to arrange medicines and oxygen cylinders. Amid this, the pack of foreign correspondents and their desi counterparts, who in the first wave couldn’t understand why COVID-19 wasn’t killing the natives in sufficient numbers, have made a triumphant comeback. With intrusive pictures of burning pyres that’d shame vultures, the ecosystem that lives for poverty porn is back with many of them claiming that India is grossly underreporting the number of its COVID-19 deaths.

John Burn-Murdoch of the Financial Times even claimed that the “numbers of Covid victims who have been cremated are 10x larger than official Covid death counts in same areas”.

Now, if you claim that the death toll is twice the government figure, it’s still understandable but if one claims it’s 10 times the number, it fails to pass the basic smell test.

To begin with, the under-reported death figures aren’t part of some grand global conspiracy. This has been happening and will continue to happen across the globe. For example, New York City was accused of underreporting its nursing home deaths by a few thousand that were added to the tally in early February 2021, this pushed their total nursing home resident deaths in the state up from 8,500 to nearly 15,000.

So, it’s quite natural that if one digs deeper, one will find that state governments are underreporting deaths. But that’s not the point. This piece doesn’t carry a brief for any government, nor is it an apologia to reduce the death count. The only thing we are bothered about is the truth.

Now let’s examine the lofty claim that the death rate is 10 times what’s being officially reported. For starters, the criticism of the government’s nefarious schemes has to be consistent. Critics would’ve us believe that the same governments (state and central), which can’t provide basic facilities during the second wave are somehow Machiavellian enough to under-count death rates by a factor of 10!

If the death count was actually 10 times, it’d suggest that both state and central governments, which have a plethora of different political parties, somehow managed to come together on the same page and keep the official numbers down.
And they somehow managed to do so under immense scrutiny from NGOs, media, activists, and the foreign press.

Also, numbers don’t lie.

Also, just to give you some perspective, the current number of deaths as of this moment is 1,98,899. If the number was 10 times, it’d suggest that 20 lakh (or 2 million) people in India had succumbed to COVID-19.

Even a flat earther would think twice before making the aforementioned claim.

By the way, we had the same narrative last year during the 1st wave albeit with a different religion. In 2020 we were flooded with stories of the Muslim burial grounds being overburdened and running out of space and there are dead bodies everywhere.

So is it possible that there were underreported deaths during the 1st wave? Yes, but the key question is by how much? If it was 10 times do you understand the amount of time & in the case of Muslims the amount of space that would be required to bury people? By the way, such stories had cropped up in Mumbai too. But then after a while, it was clear that the chaos was partly because of the spike (which is expected), but, it was primarily because burial grounds were overburdened with COVID-19 protocols.

Another way to decipher all of this is to look at the death rates of 2018 to 2020. We can study the trends and wherever we find gaps we can try to use basic logic to decipher what is happening. So what points should be considered to break this down?

  1. What is the spike in terms of absolute numbers of deaths?
  2. In which period did this spike happen?
  3. Can these numbers be given to COVID completely? If yes, why?

If someone says Yes to point 3 what they are trying to say is that every extra death in India has happened only because of COVID!!! Does that mean deaths by other causes are reported perfectly? Of course, the third point is outrageous, since it’s impossible to believe that Indians have become immune to every other disease.

Let’s look at the data. In Mumbai, 21,000 more deaths (around 23%) were reported in the 2020 calendar year compared to 2019. It was 1,11,942 in 2020 and 91,223 in 2019. The month of May 2020 had by far the highest amount of deaths registered (14328) compared to 7335 deaths from May 2019.

Now here are some points that we should remember when we further analyse this data:

  1. When we calculate the excess mortality data we must keep in mind the standard year-on-year rise of deaths by 2 to 2.5%.
  2. One must also remember that these are the total number of deaths in the whole year. These numbers do not indicate or consider deaths by various other causes. For eg, during the 1st wave, the entire health infrastructure had collapsed and patients suffering from various other chronic illnesses like cancer, kidney failure, hypertension, and diabetes were denied basic healthcare access. Also, the lockdown had temporarily reduced the rate of deaths by road accidents for a while, but it had also resulted in an increase of deaths by suicides. To get a real picture one might have to look at the age-wise distribution to get an even better idea (COVID-19 does tend to harm the 60 and above age group more).

The official COVID-19 fatality number of Mumbai was 11,116 for the year 2020. So when we take points number 1 and 2 into consideration and try to break down the excess number of deaths, it would be fewer or not more than 2 times the official count.

Another point we need to remember in the case of Mumbai is that the 1st wave had hit the slums disproportionately more than the non-slums. This can be seen by looking at the sero survey conducted by BMC that showed 57% of the people in slums had antibodies to Covid-19 as against 16% in non-slum pockets. How do we know whether the sero survey was right? Well during the second wave the infection spread is completely lopsided in comparison to the 1st wave. Unlike the 1st wave, the 2nd wave in Mumbai has found 90% are concentrated in high-rise buildings while slums account for just 10%. Slum-dwellers do not have the same level of access to quality healthcare in comparison to non-slum dwellers. This is another factor that should be considered when we try to understand the overall mortality narrative.

Let us consider another state for our analysis. The state of Kerala released its all cause-mortality data and as per that Kerala recorded over 16,000 fewer deaths in 2020 compared to the average of the previous five years. The point to be noted here is that Kerala had and still has the 2nd highest number of infections in the entire country.

If one was to consider all these factors the only rational conclusion that can be derived is that the deaths at most could be 2 times what the governments (state and central) claim. It cannot be beyond that. And if someone wants to make the 10 times claim then they should provide the evidence for the same.

Taking some news reports and amplifying them to suggest the entire country is crumbling is not data crunching, it’s simply pandering to the ‘bhay ka mahaul’ narrative without giving facts to substantiate it. In a huge country like India, it’s always possible to find any story to fit one’s narrative but that doesn’t make it the universal truth.

The only way to figure out the real Covid-19 mortality numbers for 2021 would be looking at the annual death data and then trying to make sense out of that after a year in 2022.

As Carl Sagan once said, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Nothing substantiates the 10 times claims and stories of crematoriums might excite a naïve audience back home, but it certainly doesn’t pass the muster.

In fact, one would’ve to use a metaphorical blade of two philosophical razors to truly slice through the ridiculous claims of the death porn enthusiasts: Hitchen’s and Hanlon’s. While Hitchen’s states that what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence, Hanlon’s states: “Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity.”

A close observation would show that we can reject the claims simply because they are being made either from malice or stupidity, neither of which is a great skill for data observation.

Note: This article was originally published on the blog of the author

US govt officials purchased body parts of aborted babies for ‘science’, reveals emails between FDA officials and human tissue procurement firm

OpIndia Staff
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US govt officials purchased body parts of aborted babies for ‘science’, reveals emails between FDA officials and human tissue procurement firm

In a shocking revelation, federal employees of the United States government are accused of being involved in trafficking the body parts of aborted babies. This was found in emails uncovered by Judicial Watch’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which have exposed grim details of how the US government employees worked with buyers to get ‘fresh’ aborted baby organs for medical and scientific experiments.

The email records received by the Judicial Watch confirm that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) agreed to pay $2,000 for each aborted child, totalling $12,000 per average box of harvested organs. The emails also shed light on the links between the US FDA with the Advanced Bioscience Resources (ABR), likely America’s largest fetal tissue trafficking firm.

Morbid details revealed…

The FDA, as the article in The Federalist says, was involved in the trade of organs like livers, brains, and eyeballs of dismembered babies, buying them for several hundred dollars apiece from ABR, which was in cahoots with local Planned Parenthoods.

Another explosive revelation made in the report was in connection with the trafficking of a 21-Week-Old Down Syndrome Baby. The report said that child’s limbs, organs, and skin were sold at hundreds of dollars apiece. ABR earned $2,600 in total from the sale of the aborted baby and his body parts.

The details of the trafficking are grim and frightful. Each body part of a baby is given a particular number and sold individually to different customers. The aborted babies simply become a statistic for the traders, who make money by selling their organs, including the skin.

In one of the email conversations chanced upon by the Judicial Watch, FDA was found demanding ‘fresh’ babies of ABR. The initial quote by the FDA mentioned that tissues must be “fresh, never frozen” and harvested from babies 16-24 weeks old “free of known chromosomal abnormalities.”

Many Americans are inclined to believe that abortions are normally planned when the babies have diminishing chances of living outside the womb. However, emails disclosed that the FDA purchased various body parts from babies up to 24 weeks old, a date at which many pre-term babies survive and go on to live healthy lives.

The receipts of the transactions confirm that the US Food and Drug Administration also paid for securing skulls of second-trimester babies for use in experiments.

While the FDA demanded to be provided with ‘fresh’ tissue, the ABR responded saying that most of the busiest abortion clinics in California produced ‘awful’ specimens that were too disfigured to use.

The FDA even sought organs from baby boys to use in “very important and … challenging” surgeries to create humanized mice. The ABR responded by saying that they would try their very best to secure such tissues but given the “nature of termination procedures,” which mutilate a baby’s body beyond physical recognition, it cannot make any promises.

The cruel dehumanization of the aborted babies became even starker after the emails revealed that they were referred to as “beautiful” and “amazing” by FDA and ABR.

Besides, the email traffic also disclosed that American taxpayers paid for the FDA trips to ‘Humanized Mice Workshops’ in Europe.

American commentator Alex Jones vindicated?

The above findings on the trafficking of body parts of aborted babies vindicate the assertions made by InfoWars host Alex Jones, who had alleged in 2019 that babies were harvested for organ trade. Jones then had an angry meltdown after the Senate had voted in favor of keeping abortions legal.

In a show with Joe Rogan, Jones said, “I came here, and I proved they’re keeping babies alive and taking their organs. The Senate voted Monday to keep it legal…They f***ing did it, Bravo. And you can’t f***ng admit they’re killing already-born kids, so you’re telling me it isn’t real when they had a f***ing vote in the god***n f***ing Senate.”

Joe Biden reversed Trump policy protecting the bodies of aborted babies

It is worth noting that these revelations about the FDA’s involvement in the trafficking of baby body parts come at a time when the Biden administration has reversed Trump admin’s policy of protecting preborn Americans from being reduced to tradeable commodities.

Earlier this month, the National Institutes of Health removed restrictions that the Trump administration imposed on research using fetal tissue, allowing university researchers and government scientists freer rein to use material from elective abortions when studying diseases and possible treatments.

Top mental health experts ask media not to create panic around Covid-19, criticise negative reporting from crematoriums

OpIndia Staff
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Top mental health experts ask media not to create panic around Covid-19, criticise negative reporting from crematoriums

Senior Professor of Psychiatry and the current Director of NIMHANS, Dr. BN Gangadhar along with other esteemed mental health professionals called upon the media to avoid “panic-inducing coverage” through an open letter. The health experts issued an open letter criticising the media for reporting Covid-19 deaths from crematoriums and creating hysteria and panic among the people. The letter goes into detail regarding the various mental health problems a person encounters when bombarded with overtly negative and pessimistic media coverage around the clock.

“Mass media has the power to communicate to millions at the same time. When the reach is so huge, every word, every image, and every nuance matters. However, what we are seeing on our TV screens, mobile screens and newspapers is disconcerting, to put it very mildly.” the letter reads, establishing the responsibility of the mainstream media.

The letter criticized the mainstream media’s overtly negative, dower and opportunistic coverage of the Coronavirus pandemic.

“Images of bodies burning in cremation grounds, relatives of the deceased wailing inconsolably, emotional outbursts, and hysterical reporters with cameramen swarming over the bereaved who are going through deeply emotional moments – this may help garner eyeballs. But there is a steep price to be paid for such coverage.” the letter goes on.

In order to demonstrate their point, the health professionals put forth an illustration in the letter.

“Imagine someone has just tested positive for COVID-19. If they have witnessed the panic-inducing coverage from cremation grounds, it keeps weighing on their minds and their loved ones. The fact that a huge number of people who are infected by COVID-19 recover becomes immaterial. Only images and emotions stay with them.”

The mental health doctors emphasized the need for a positive mindset and requested the media to avoid “panic-inducing” coverage.

“Yet again, we are not saying that the facts should not be reported. We are saying that hysteria and panic-inducing coverage should be avoided,” the letter makes clear.

“As mental health professionals, we can tell you that specific information empowers people and prepares them to face any challenge. But panic weakens them”.

The letter concludes by reminding the media of its responsibilities of sharing authentic information and allaying fears. The letter requests restraint on part of the media in the public interest.

This letter was signed by Dr. BN Gangadhar, Director of NIMHANS, along with Pratima Murthy (H.O.D. of Psychiatry, NIMHANS), Gautam Sinha (President, Indian Psychiatric Society), and Rajesh Sagar (Professor of Psychiatry, AIIMS Delhi)

Australian Porsche driver who filmed and mocked four policemen dying after hit by a truck sent to prison, judge describes the act as “heartless and cruel”

OpIndia Staff
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Australian Porsche driver who filmed and mocked four policemen dying after hit by a truck sent to prison, judge describes the act as “heartless and cruel”

An Australian driver has been sentenced to 10 months in prison for filming the death of four policemen who were hit by a truck on a freeway. The judge described the act as “heartless, cruel and disgraceful.”

The 42-year-old Richard Pusey was pulled over by the police for speeding on Melbourne’s Eastern Freeway in April 2020, as he was found driving at 149kmph. The police were considering impounding his luxurious Porsche when a truck crashed into the officers, the Porsche and two police cars which were parked in an emergency stopping lane. Mr Pusey was not hit by the truck because he was urinating in the bushes at that time.

Instead of helping the policemen, Mr Pusey pulled out his phone and began filming the scene. Calling the dastardly accident ‘beautiful’, his commentary included “he’s smashed,” “justice,” “absolutely amazing.”

When a bystander rushed to the aid of the injured officers Mr. Pusey dissed him saying, “They’re dead,” and continued filming.

“I think everyone got cleaned up. I guess I’ll be getting a … Uber home, huh.” Pusey remarked in the video.

Richard Pusey being taken into custody. Image Source: AP

Citing personality disorder as the reason for his behavior, Mr Pusey has been sentenced to 10 months in prison. However, as he has already spent 296 days in prison during the trial, his sentence will beover after a few days. But he is expected to remain in jail for some other unrelated cases against him.

He also pleaded guilty for possessing ecstasy and tested positive for that drug and cannabis after he was pulled over. Apart from imprisonment, he has been fined 1,000 Australian dollars and barred from driving for two years.

However, the families of the victim are not satisfied at the verdict. Stuart Schulze, husband of Lynette Taylor, one of the officers killed in the accident, described the sentence as “too lenient” and “totally inappropriate.”

Two weeks ago, Mohinder Singh, the driver of the truck who killed the four officers, was sentenced to 22 years in prison. He had been under the influence of drugs and was sleep-deprived when he rammed into the officers on the freeway. He has been found guilty to four counts of culpable driving causing death, three charges of drug trafficking and one of possessing illicit drugs.

White House chief medical advisor Dr Fauci says Covaxin is effective against the B.1.617 variant of Coronavirus found in India

OpIndia Staff
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White House chief medical advisor Dr Fauci says Covaxin is effective against the B.1.617 variant of Coronavirus found in India

White House chief medical advisor and America’s top pandemic expert Dr Anthony Fauci during a conference call on Tuesday said that India’s indigenous Covid-19 vaccine Covaxin has been found to neutralize the B.1.617 variant of the deadly virus. B.1.617 variant is one of the known variants of SARS-CoV-2 virus, which was first identified in India. It is called a “double mutation” variant as it contains the L452R and E484Q mutations, although it contains 13 mutations in total.

“This is something where we’re still gaining data on a daily basis. But the most recent data was looking at convalescent Sera of Covid-19 cases and people who received the vaccine used in India, the Covaxin. It was found to neutralize the 617 variant,” he said.

Talking about the current crisis being faced by India, Dr Fauci emphasized on the importance of getting jabbed. “So, despite the real difficulty that we’re seeing in India, vaccination could be a very, very important antidote against this,” he added.

Explaining the working of Covaxin, the New York Times on Tuesday said that the vaccine works by teaching the immune system to make antibodies against the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. 

The statement will put to rest the controversies that were being spiked on the efficacy of Covaxin by certain experts and journalists in India.

ICMR issues results on Covaxin’s efficacy

After being questioned on the vaccine’s ability to neutralize new variants, ICMR last week released the results of a study that proves that Covaxin neutralizes multiple variants of SARS-CoV-2 including the double mutant strain which is said to be fueling the second wave of coronavirus in India.

The report of the study said, “Twelve isolates of VUI lineage B.1.617 were propagated in VeroCCL81 cells and characterized. Convalescent sera of the COVID-19 cases and recipients of BBV152 (Covaxin) were able to neutralize VUI B.1.617.”

From January to March 2021, the researchers had identified 146 COVID-19 cases from the state of Maharashtra for study. Among these, 15 retrieved SARS-CoV-2 sequences demonstrated the presence of a combination of L452R and E484Q mutations, or the B.1.617 variant. Virus isolation was attempted from all the 15 specimens using Vero-CCL-81 cells. Among them 12 clinical specimens were found suitable for study with the vaccine.

The efficacy of Covaxin against this variant was tested using the sera collected from Covid-19 infected persons who were administered the vaccine during phase-2 of the clinical trial. The study showed that the efficacy of the vaccine against B.1.617 variant was same as the efficacy against other earlier variants like B.1.1.7, B.1.351, and B.1.1.28.2.

Covaxin developed by Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech Ltd in collaboration with ICMR showed 78 percent efficacy in trial results.

No, Ghaziabad girl who ‘donated from piggy bank for PM CARES fund’ did not die ‘waiting for oxygen’, is alive and healthy, father reveals

OpIndia Staff
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No, Ghaziabad girl who ‘donated from piggy bank for PM CARES fund’ did not die ‘waiting for oxygen’, is alive and healthy, father reveals

The UP Police today took to Twitter to inform that the torrent of tweets regarding the death of a Ghaziabad girl were all fake.

Recently, multiple tweets had gone viral wherein it was claimed that a girl broke her piggy bank and donated Rs 5,000 to the PM CARES fund but she died because she did not get oxygen.

Some such tweets also claimed that the girl was from Ghaziabad. However, that is not true. UP Police on Wednesday took to Twitter to set the matters straight.

“Amidst covid pandemic, some vested interests are spreading an ‘Infodemic’ of #FakeNews related to tragedies in order to defame the administration,” the tweet posted by the official Twitter account of Uttar Pradesh.

In the clip, the girl’s father says that his 18 year old daughter is healthy and is currently getting discharged.

The UP police have alleged that ‘tool kit tweets’ were being used by the miscreants to spread rumours and create panic amidst the COVID-19 outbreak. In a subsequent tweet, the police said similar ‘tool kit tweets’ were found about Noida police where several people posted spread fake news about tragedies to malign the administration.

It also added that an FIR has been lodged in the case against the culprits responsible for spreading the rumours on the internet.

“We mourn the loss of precious human lives & request unscrupulous elements to refrain from making capital out of people’s tragedies,” the UP police appealed.

UP Police files FIR against social media users for tarnishing the image of government and Noida police through fake tweets

Last Saturday, the Uttar Pradesh Police filed an FIR against social media users for attempting to tarnish the image of the UP government and Noida Police by using fake accounts to spread rumours and create panic amidst the raging COVID-19 outbreak.

The decision to file an FIR came after Twitter was flooded with identical tweets of bereavement in which the users insinuated that the death of their loved ones because of the pandemic is to be blamed on the administration. The tweets mentioned UP CM Yogi Adityanath, PM Modi and several other prominent personalities.

The police also shared screenshots of the copy-pasted messages being circulated on social media websites. The screenshots comprised of identical tweets posted by several users expressing their bereavement at the loss of their loved ones because of the pandemic.

After booking five-star hotel for judges, Delhi govt books 240 rooms in 4 hotels for Covid-19 treatment of government officials

OpIndia Staff
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After booking five-star hotel for judges, Delhi govt books 240 rooms in 4 hotels for Covid-19 treatment of government officials

Just days after the Delhi govt had booked a 5-star hotel for Covid-19 treatment of judges by falsely claiming that the Delhi High Court had ordered the same, the AAP govt has now booked 4 hotels for Covid-19 treatment of govt officials.

The Arvind Kejriwal-led Delhi government has issued an order to restart the Covid-19 facility in four hotels under the supervision of two hospitals. A total of 240 rooms have been booked for Covid-19 positive officers of the Government of NCT of Delhi, Autonomous bodies, Corporations and Local Bodies and their family members.

The four hotels listed in the order are 70 rooms in Hotel Ginger, 50 rooms in Vivek Nagar, 50 rooms in Hotel Park Plaza, Shahdra, Hotel Leela Ambience, CBD Ground and full Hotel Golden Tulip Essential, Hari Nagar, which has 70 rooms. While Rajiv Gandhi Super Speciality Hospital will provide medical facilities in the first three hotels, Deen Dayal Upadhyay Hospital will provide medical facilities in the fourth.

In the order, Aam Aadmi Party-led Delhi Government directed the Director of RGSSH and Medical Superintendent of DDU to “provide Covid Health Care facility at these Hotels to the COVID positive officer/officials/their families treating them as if they are admitted in the Hospital. Serious patients could be shifted to the main Hospital Area.”

The order further stated that the treatment or quarantine for Covid-19 positive patients in Delhi Government, Autonomous Bodies, Corporations & Local Bodies and their family members would be provided at these hotels exclusively.

Netizens deemed the step discriminatory

Kapil Sharma, leader of BJP, tweeted the order and said, “The public is dying while searching for a single bed. How can this be tolerated?”

One netizen pointed out that Leela Ambience is a 5-star hotel where single day rent for a room is Rs.7000.

Another netizen said that there is a lack of doctors and healthcare workers in Delhi and called the order a national crime.

High Court had criticized Delhi Government for 100 rooms allotment for the judiciary

On April 27, the High Court of Delhi slammed the Delhi Government for booking 100 rooms at a 5-star hotel for the judicial officers. The Court said, “We have not made any such request that you set it up at this hotel or that hotel. The purpose of the meeting was that the judiciary, especially subordinate courts. We’ve already lost to two judicial officers.”

Calling it a way of appeasement, the Court had said, “You are passing orders left right and centre without meaning to do anything about it.. We have not even asked for it. That hospital has no manpower, no equipment, no ventilator, no medicines,” the Court said. “What is the protection? That …it is to benefit ourselves or that you have done to appease us.”

Gujarat: Reliance Industries to set up 1000-bed Covid hospital with oxygen supply facility in Jamnagar

OpIndia Staff
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Gujarat: Reliance Industries to set up 1000-bed Covid hospital with oxygen supply facility in Jamnagar

Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries Limited(RIL) will set up a 1,000-bed hospital with an oxygen supply facility in Gujarat’s Jamnagar.

Of the total 1,000 beds, 400 will be made operational by the next Sunday, a statement released by the Gujarat government said. The company will also employ its strength to add remaining 600 beds in a week’s time.

Amidst the increasing COVID-19 surge in Gujarat, chief minister Vijay Rupani had asked the Indian billionaire to help the state in its fight against the pandemic. Heeding to Rupani’s request, Mukesh Ambani assured him that Reliance family stands with the government in service of the people in this crisis of COVID-19 outbreak.

“Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani spoke to RIL Chairman Mukesh Ambani to request him for a 1,000-bed Covid- hospital in Jamnagar. In a prompt response to CM’s appeal, RIL chairman assured the government to set up the hospital in this hour of crisis for the benefit of people of Gujarat,” a press note by the State government said.

The officials have been reportedly directed to start working on the project immediately. The state government has extended assistance in the terms of manpower or human resource required for the hospital. Meanwhile, the equipment, machinery and supportive infrastructure will be set up by Reliance Industries.

The hospital will specially benefit the people of Jamnagar, Dwarka, Porbandar and adjoining districts, the Gujarat government note said.

Reliance supplies oxygen from its Jamnagar refinery free of cost to Maharashtra

Earlier this month, Reliance had sent oxygen to Maharashtra free of cost from its Gujarat refinery. Maharashtra was then facing an acute shortage of oxygen because of the rising number of COVID-19 cases. A Reliance official, who asked not to be identified due to the company’s internal policy, informed that Reliance was diverting some oxygen streams meant for its petroleum coke gasification units after making it suitable for medical use.

Adar Poonawalla announces reduction in Covishield vaccine price, will be available for state govts for Rs 300 per dose

OpIndia Staff
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Adar Poonawalla announces reduction in Covishield vaccine price, will be available for state govts for Rs 300 per dose

Adar Poonawalla, the CEO of Serum Institute of India and the manufacturer of Covishield has announced a reduction of 25 percent in the price of the vaccine.

Terming it as a philanthropic move, Poonawalla informed that the price of Covishield has been slashed to Rs 300/ dose for the states effective immediately, as per a CNBC TV18 report. He says the move was in the interest of states to help save funds. 

In a tweet, Poonawalla further stated that the price reduction will enable state governments to save crores and will also encourage more vaccinations, thereby saving countless lives.

The Serum Institute of India had earlier announced the prices of its Covid-19 vaccine Covishield for State governments and private hospitals at Rs 400 per dose, and Rs 600 per dose respectively. 

A statement was released by the Serum Institute of India in which it made the announcement of providing its vaccines to the state governments and private hospitals in the wake of the broad guidelines issued by the central government for the procurement of vaccines.

Multiple states have already placed orders in bulk with the SII for procurement of the Covishield for Phase 03 of the vaccination drive which opens on May 01 for beneficiaries between 18 to 45 years.

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