SC upholds women’s right to worship Ayyappa, lifts ban on their entry into Sabarimala temple

Mangaluru, Jan 24: Deputy Commissioner Sindhu B Rupesh on Friday said that a specialised task force to manage natural disasters would soon be constituted in all talukas of the Dakshina Kannada district, an official statement said here.

She further said in a meeting of the District Disaster Management Authority that during the floods last monsoon there was a shortage of boats to rescue stranded residents from flood-hit areas. Hence, more boats would be procured for the Home Guards and the Fire and Emergency Services.

She also instructed officials to make sure that schools have their own disaster management plans and also advised them to carry emergency materials kit, used during a natural disaster, in their vehicles.

Bengaluru , Mar 21: Karnataka Congress President DK Shivakumar exuded confidence that the party will return to power in the state and praised former chief minister Siddaramaiah's term.

"I am confident that we will come back to power. Everyone in the past has worked their best to build the party. Siddaramaiah being a full-term chief minister gave the best programs to Karnataka, his government's programs were the best of all time," Shivakumar said at a press conference on Friday.

He further assured his full support to anyone who wanted to work for the betterment of the party.

"Though I have become the state president of the party but I am still the worker of Congress and each of us should work for the party as ground workers. I am ready to give any kind of support to those who want to work for the party. We need to take all caste, communities along for the betterment of the party," he said.

Shivakumar was appointed the state Congress President on March 11, while Eshwar Khandre, Satish Jarkiholi, and Saleem Ahmed have been appointed working presidents of Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee.

London/Milan, Jun 2: World Health Organization experts and a range of other scientists said on Monday there was no evidence to support an assertion by a high profile Italian doctor that the coronavirus causing the COVID-19 pandemic has been losing potency.

Professor Alberto Zangrillo, head of intensive care at Italy's San Raffaele Hospital in Lombardy, which bore the brunt of Italy's COVID-19 epidemic, on Sunday told state television that the new coronavirus "clinically no longer exists".

But WHO epidemiologist Maria Van Kerkhove, as well as several other experts on viruses and infectious diseases, said Zangrillo's comments were not supported by scientific evidence.

There is no data to show the new coronavirus is changing significantly, either in its form of transmission or in the severity of the disease it causes, they said.

"In terms of transmissibility, that has not changed, in terms of severity, that has not changed," Van Kerkhove told reporters.

It is not unusual for viruses to mutate and adapt as they spread, and the debate on Monday highlights how scientists are monitoring and tracking the new virus. The COVID-19 pandemic has so far killed more than 370,000 people and infected more than 6 million.

Martin Hibberd, a professor of emerging infectious disease at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said major studies looking at genetic changes in the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 did not support the idea that it was becoming less potent, or weakening in any way.

"With data from more than 35,000 whole virus genomes, there is currently no evidence that there is any significant difference relating to severity," he said in an emailed comment.

Zangrillo, well known in Italy as the personal doctor of former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, said his comments were backed up by a study conducted by a fellow scientist, Massimo Clementi, which Zangrillo said would be published next week.

Zangrillo told Reuters: "We have never said that the virus has changed, we said that the interaction between the virus and the host has definitely changed."

He said this could be due either to different characteristics of the virus, which he said they had not yet identified, or different characteristics in those infected.

The study by Clementi, who is director of the microbiology and virology laboratory of San Raffaele, compared virus samples from COVID-19 patients at the Milan-based hospital in March with samples from patients with the disease in May.

"The result was unambiguous: an extremely significant difference between the viral load of patients admitted in March compared to" those admitted last month, Zangrillo said.

Oscar MacLean, an expert at the University of Glasgow's Centre for Virus Research, said suggestions that the virus was weakening were "not supported by anything in the scientific literature and also seem fairly implausible on genetic grounds."