PM Modi, Jordan king discuss challenges posed by COVID-19

Mumbai, Mar 29: Virologist Minal Dakhave Bhosale led from the front to create India's first coronavirus testing kit even when she was in the last stage of her pregnancy.

Bhosale's efforts paid the price with her team delivering the testing kit in a record time of six weeks.

Bhosale gave birth to a baby girl just a day before submitting the kit to the authorities for evaluation.

"It was like giving birth to two babies," Bhosale told PTI over the phone.

The virologist said both the journeys - that happened in parallel - were not without challenges.

"There were complications in the pregnancy while work on the test kit was on. The baby was delivered through cesarean," she said.

Bhosale said she felt that it was the right time to serve the people to help them in combating the coronavirus threat.

"I had been working for five years in this field and if I don't work in emergency situations when my services are needed the most, then what is the use?" she said.

Though Bhosale was not able to visit the office due to the pregnancy, she was guiding a team of 10 persons working on the project at Mylab Discovery in Pune.

The strong bonds forged with the team over the years and their support made it possible, she said.

Company's co-founder Shrikant Patole said just like drug discovery, test kits too go through a lot of quality checks to improve the precision.

He credited Bhosale for the success of the project.

The COVID-19 testing kit delivered by Bhosale's team will reduce the time taken for delivering a result to 2.5 hours from the prevalent practice of eight hours.

A pioneering approach to testing without compromising on the results was adopted, Bhosale said.

The Maylab test kit will cost Rs1,200, a quarter of Rs 4,500 per kit that the government has been spending on testing so far.

"I'm happy that I could do something for the country," Bhosale said.

As of Friday, only 27,000 of the 1.3 billion people were tested for the virus in the country.

According to experts, high scale testing is essential because it alone can ensure an early diagnosis of COVID-19 and lower down the fatalities.

The company is confident of ramping up the capacity at its plant in Lonavala to deliver 100,000 kits a week, Patole said.

He said the authorities are helping the company, including giving priority for shipping of the raw materials.

Mumbai, Mar 27: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Friday lowered the key repo rate by 75 basis points to 4.4 per cent in a bid to arrest the economic slowdown amid coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak.
The reverse repo rate now stands at 4 per cent, down by 90 basis points, said RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das adding this has been done to make it unattractive for banks to passively deposit funds with the central bank and instead lend it to the productive sectors.
The six-member monetary policy committee (MPC) met on March 24, 25 and 27 and voted 4:2 in favour of the repo rate reduction. The MPC also decided to continue with the accommodative stance as long as it is necessary to revive growth and mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on the economy while ensuring that inflation remains within the target.
"The need of the hour is to shield the economy from the pandemic," said Das. "We need to mitigate the impact of coronavirus, revive economic growth and provide financial stability."
Repo rate is the rate at which a country's central bank lends money to commercial banks, and the reverse repo rate is the rate at which it borrows from them.
The RBI Governor further said that the economic growth and inflation projection will be highly contingent depending on the duration, spread and intensity of the pandemic.
"Global economic activity has come to a near standstill as COVID-19 related lockdowns and social distancing are imposed across a widening swathe of affected countries. Expectations of a shallow recovery in 2020 from 2019's decade low in global growth have been dashed," said Das.
"The outlook is now heavily contingent upon the intensity, spread and duration of the pandemic. There is a rising probability that large parts of the global economy will slip into recession," he said.
However, the RBI has injected liquidity of Rs 2.8 lakh crore via various instruments equal to 1.4 per cent of GDP. "Along with today's measures, liquidity measures equal to 3.2 per cent of GDP. The RBI will take continuous measures to ensure liquidity in the system."
The RBI governor has said that all banking institutions can offer a three-month moratorium on all loans for a period of three months. The RBI has also allowed banks to restructure the working capital cycle for companies without worrying that these will have to be classified as a non-performing asset (NPA).
The three-month moratorium will permit banks to avoid a large onset of NPAs during the 21-day lockdown and keep their books healthy.
Das said banks and other financial institutions should do all they can to keep credit flowing to economic agents facing financial stress on account of the isolation that the virus has imposed.
"Market participants should work with regulators like the RBI and the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) to ensure the orderly functioning of markets in their role of price discovery and financial intermediation," he said.

New Delhi, Jun 17: With an increase of 10,974 new cases and 2,003 deaths in the last 24 hours, India's COVID-19 count reached 3,54,065 on Wednesday while the toll due to the virus stands at 11,903.

This includes 1,55,227 active cases and 1,86,935 cured, discharged and migrated patients, according to the Union Health Ministry.

While the spike in the number of cases has stayed below the 11-thousand mark, the death toll has increased manifold today as compared to the 380 death reported on Tuesday.

Maharashtra with 1,13,445 cases continues to be the worst-affected state in the country with 50,057 active cases while 57,851 patients have been cured and discharged in the state so far. The toll due to COVID-19 has crossed the five thousand mark and reached 5,537 in the state.

It is followed by Tamil Nadu with 48,019 and the national capital with 44,688 confirmed cases.