Karnataka to build a ‘detention centre’ for overstaying foreigners, illegal immigrants

Mangaluru, Jun 29: Senior IPS officer Vikash Kumar Vikash today took over as the new commissioner of police of Mangaluru city.

He replaced Dr P S Harsha, who was recently transferred and posted as the Deputy Inspector General and Commissioner of Information and Public Relations.

Before coming to Mangaluru as city police chief, Vikash Kumar was the Deputy Inspector General of Police and Commander of Anti Naxal Force.

He had also served as the superintendent of police of Chikkamagaluru district.

The current physical distancing guidelines provided by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) may not be adequate to curb the coronavirus spread, according to a research which says the gas cloud from a cough or sneeze may help virus particles travel up to 8 metres. The research, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, noted that the the current guidelines issued by the WHO and CDC are based on outdated models from the 1930s of how gas clouds from a cough, sneeze, or exhalation spread.

Study author, MIT associate professor Lydia Bourouiba, warned that droplets of all sizes can travel 23 to 27 feet, or 7-8 metres, carrying the pathogen.

According to Bourouiba, the current guidelines are based on "arbitrary" assumptions of droplet size, "overly simplified", and "may limit the effectiveness of the proposed interventions" against the deadly pandemic.

 She explained that the old guidelines assume droplets to be one of two categories, small or large, taking short-range semi-ballistic trajectories when a person exhales, coughs, or sneezes.

However based on more recent discoveries, the MIT scientist said, sneezes and coughs are made of a puff cloud that carries ambient air, transporting within it clusters of droplets of a wide range of sizes.

Bourouiba warned that this puff cloud, with ambient air entrapped in it, can offer the droplets moisture and warmth that can prevent it from evaporation in the outer environment.

"The locally moist and warm atmosphere within the turbulent gas cloud allows the contained droplets to evade evaporation for much longer than occurs with isolated droplets," she said.

"Under these conditions, the lifetime of a droplet could be considerably extended by a factor of up to 1000, from a fraction of a second to minutes," the researcher explained in the study.

The MIT scientist, who has researched the dynamics of coughs and sneezes for years, added that these droplets settle along the trajectory of a cough or sneeze contaminating surfaces, with their residues staying suspended in the air for hours.

"Even when maximum containment policies were enforced, the rapid international spread of COVID-19 suggests that using arbitrary droplet size cutoffs may not accurately reflect what actually occurs with respiratory emissions, possibly contributing to the ineffectiveness of some procedures used to limit the spread of respiratory disease," Bourouiba wrote in the study

Kasaragod, April 9: After Supreme Court intervened and settled the Border issue with Karnataka authorities who had consented to allow the critically-ill patients from in and around Kasaragod and nearby areas to cross over to nearby Mangalore for getting urgent and critical care treatment, the Karnataka authorities is alleged to continue to be hostile either by blocking way ahead or turning a deaf ear to the patients reaching there.

It was on Wednesday onwards that the check post at Thalapadi near here on the Kozhikode-Mangalore National Highway was opened for the critically-ill patients to cross over to Mangalore hospitals for medical treatment.

However, reports reaching here said two out of the three critically-ill patients, who made it to Mangalore were allegedly ill-treated or given no treatment forcing them to return back to Kerala.