Swacch Mangaluru Abhiyan completes 35 weeks; Marnamikatta gets a new look

Udupi, Jun 28: The Padubidri police have booked cases against two patients of Novel Coronavirus for not revealing their primary contacts and hiding their travel history.

According to DHO Sudhirchandra Sooda, two siblings from Hejamadi in Padubidri had tested positive for COVID-19 recently. After shifting to the hospital, when the officials asked them about their primary contacts and travel history, the patients furnished false information.

When the officials collected information from various sources, they realised that the duo had travelled to Bantwal, Kasargod, Ullal and other places in Dakshina Kannada, said Dr Sooda. Hence, the district administration decided to file cases against them, he added.

Washington, Jun 30: Researchers in China have discovered a new type of swine flu that is capable of triggering a pandemic, according to a study published Monday in the US science journal PNAS.

Named G4, it is genetically descended from the H1N1 strain that caused a pandemic in 2009.

It possesses "all the essential hallmarks of being highly adapted to infect humans," say the authors, scientists at Chinese universities and China's Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

The researchers then carried out various experiments including on ferrets, which are widely used in flu studies because they experience similar symptoms to humans -- principally fever, coughing and sneezing. 

G4 was observed to be highly infectious, replicating in human cells and causing more serious symptoms in ferrets than other viruses.

Tests also showed that any immunity humans gain from exposure to seasonal flu does not provide protection from G4.

According to blood tests which showed up antibodies created by exposure to the virus, 10.4 percent of swine workers had already been infected.

The tests showed that as many as 4.4 percent of the general population also appeared to have been exposed.

The virus has therefore already passed from animals to humans but there is no evidence yet that it can be passed from human to human -- the scientists' main worry.

"It is of concern that human infection of G4 virus will further human adaptation and increase the risk of a human pandemic," the researchers wrote.

The authors called for urgent measures to monitor people working with pigs.

"The work comes as a salutary reminder that we are constantly at risk of new emergence of zoonotic pathogens and that farmed animals, with which humans have greater contact than with wildlife, may act as the source for important pandemic viruses," said James Wood, head of the department of veterinary medicine at Cambridge University.

A zoonotic infection is caused by a pathogen that has jumped from a non-human animal into a human.

Udupi, Jan 11: A case has been registered against Pune Billava president on the charges of issuing life threats to former Minister Vinay Kumar Sorake and Dinesh Amin Mattu at the Udupi Town Police station, police sources said on Saturday.

Former Minister Vinay Kumar Sorake along with like-minded Billawa organisations and the Udupi Muslim Federation jointly scheduled an inter-religious Billawa – Muslims Harmony meet on January 11, at the Town Hall.

Journalist Dinesh Amin Mattu was the speaker and Vinay Kumar Sorake was to preside over the programme.