ABVP activists force professor to touch students' feet

Kolkata, Mar 9: A diabetic man died in the isolation ward of a hospital in West Bengal's Murshidabad on Sunday, a day after he was admitted there with suspected symptoms of coronavirus following his return from Saudi Arabia.

According to doctors, he was admitted to the hospital with fever, cough and cold.

Though test results of his blood and swab samples for novel coronavirus were awaited, it can be said that he died probably of diabetes, Director of Health Services Ajay Chakraborty told PTI.

"The man was highly diabetic and was on insulin. He returned home from Saudi Arabia and had no money to take insulin for the last three to four days.

"He was also suffering from fever, cough and cold. He was admitted to the isolation ward of the Murshidabad Medical College and Hospital yesterday and died today," the health services director said.

"We are waiting for the results of medical tests. The possibility of his death due to novel coronavirus infection is remote," he said.

However, precautions will be taken during the last rites of the victim according to the directives set by the central and state governments for patients who die of the virus, another senior official said.

"Family members will not be allowed to touch the body since the man had been suffering from cough and breathlessness. Those performing his last rites will be given protective gear, masks and gloves. Though test results are yet to be known, we do not want to take any chance," he said.

Meanwhile, the state health department has issued a directive to all private medical facilities to create a system for assessing all patients at admission allowing early recognition of possible COVID-19 infection and immediate isolation of patients with suspected novel coronavirus infection in an area separate from other patients.

New Delhi, May 6: The government on Wednesday said no data or security breach has been identified in Aarogya Setu after an ethical hacker raised concerns about a potential security issue in the app.

The app is the government's mobile application for contact tracing and disseminating medical advisories to users in order to contain the spread of coronavirus.

On Tuesday, a French hacker and cyber security expert Elliot Alderson had claimed that "a security issue has been found" in the app and that "privacy of 90 million Indians is at stake".

Dismissing the claims, the government said "no personal information of any user has been proven to be at risk by this ethical hacker".

"We are continuously testing and upgrading our systems. Team Aarogya Setu assures everyone that no data or security breach has been identified," the government said through the app’s Twitter handle.

The tweet gave point-by-point clarification on the red flags raised by the hacker.

"We discussed with the hacker and were made aware of the following... the app fetches user location on a few occasions," it said, but added that this was by design and is clearly detailed in the privacy policy.

The app fetches users’ location and stores on the server in a secure, encrypted, anonymised manner - at the time of registration, at the time of self assessment, when users submit their contact tracing data voluntary through the app or when it fetches the contact tracing data of users after they have turned COVID-19 positive, it said.

On another issue that users can get COVID-19 stats displayed on the home screen by changing the radius and latitude-longitude using a script, Aarogya Setu said that all this information is already public for all locations and hence does not compromise on any personal or sensitive data.

"We thank the ethical hacker on engaging with us. We encourage any users who identify a vulnerability to inform us immediately...," it said.

Responding to Aarogya Setu's clarification, Alderson tweeted, "I will come back to you tomorrow".

New Delhi, Apr 11: As India battles the Covid-19 crisis, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday held a video conference with chief ministers primarily to take their feedback on whether the 21-nation-wide lockdown be extended beyond April 14 to stem the tide of the infections.

The Central government is understood to have also obtained views on the issue from all the relevant agencies and stakeholders involved in the efforts to contain the spread of the pandemic.

The video conference, which began at 11am, comes amidst indications that the central government may extend the nationwide lockdown with some possible relaxations even as Punjab and Odisha have already announced extending the lockdown beyond April 14 when the current spell of 21-day shutdown across the country ends on Tuesday.

The Union Home Ministry has sought views of state governments on various aspects, including whether more categories of people and services need to be exempted. In the current lockdown only essential services are exempted.

This is for the second time the prime minister is interacting with the chief ministers via video link after the lockdown was imposed.

During his April 2 interaction with chief ministers, Modi had pitched for a "staggered" exit from the ongoing lockdown.

A PTI tally of numbers reported by various states as on Thursday at 9.30pm showed a total of 7,510 having been affected by the virus nationwide so far with at least 251 deaths. More than 700 have been cured and discharged. However, the last update from the Union Health Ministry put the number of confirmed infections at 7,447 and the death toll at 239.

Addressing floor leaders of various parties who have representation in Parliament, Modi had on Wednesday made it clear that the lockdown cannot be lifted in one go, asserting that the priority of his government is to "save each and every life".

According to an official statement after the Wednesday interaction, the prime minister told these leaders that states, district administrations and experts have suggested extension of the lockdown to contain the spread of the virus.

Before the lockdown was announced on March 24, the prime minister had interacted with the chief ministers on March 20 to discuss ways and means to check the spread of the novel coronavirus.