India's first underwater metro nears completion after costs double

Hyderabad, Jun 30: Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech announced that it has successfully developed Covaxin, India's first vaccine candidate for Covid-19, in collaboration with the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and National Institute of Virology (NIV).

The Drug Controller General of India - CDSCO, Ministry of Health & Family Welfare granted permission to initiate Phase I & II Human clinical trials after the company submitted results generated from preclinical studies, demonstrating safety and immune response. Human clinical trials are scheduled to start across India in July 2020.

The SARS-CoV-2 strain was isolated in NIV, Pune and transferred to Bharat Biotech.

The indigenous, inactivated vaccine developed and manufactured in the company's Bio-Safety Level 3 (BSL-3) High Containment facility located in Genome Valley, Hyderabad.

Announcing the vaccine development milestone, Dr Krishna Ella, Chairman and Managing Director said: "We are proud to announce COVAXIN, India's first indigenous vaccine against COVID-19. The collaboration with ICMR and NIV was instrumental in the development of this vaccine."

Dr Ella added, "The proactive support and guidance from CDSCO has enabled approvals to this project. Our R&D and Manufacturing teams worked tirelessly to deploy our proprietary technologies towards this platform."
Expedited through national regulatory protocols, the company accelerated its objective in completing the comprehensive pre-clinical studies. Results from these studies have been promising and show extensive safety and effective immune responses.

Speaking about Bharat Biotech's prowess, Suchitra Ella, Joint Managing Director said, "Our ongoing research and expertise in forecasting epidemics has enabled us to successfully manufacture a vaccine for the H1N1 pandemic."
"Continuing our focus on creating the only BSL-3 containment facilities for manufacturing and testing in India, Bharat Biotech is committed to advancing vaccine development as a matter of national importance to demonstrate India's strength in handling future pandemics," she added.

Bharat Biotech's track record in developing vero cell culture platform technologies has been proven in several vaccines for Polio, Rabies, Rotavirus, Japanese Encephalitis, Chikungunya and Zika.

Jaipur, Jul 23: Four days after the Special Operation Group (SOG) sent a notice to Union minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat in connection with the purported audio clips indicating his alleged involvement in horse trading of MLAs in Rajasthan, a city court has directed the Rajasthan police to probe a complaint alleging Shekhawat's role in a credit society scam worth Rs 840 crore.

The additional district judge Pawan Kumar, on Tuesday, directed the additional chief judicial magistrate's court to send the complaint against Shekhawat to the SOG.

Shekhawat, his wife and other partners have been named in the complaint in the Sanjivani Credit Cooperative Society scam in which around 50,000 investors allegedly lost about Rs 840 crore.

The Jaipur unit of the SOG has been probing the scam since last year after an FIR was registered on August 23, 2019.

Now, Jaipur ADJ Court-8 ordered a fresh inquiry in the case against Gajendra Singh accepting the revised application filed by Lagu Singh and Guman Singh and said that "this is a serious matter and hence SOG should investigate this".

Both the applicants had invested a huge amount in Sanjivani credit cooperative society.

It is alleged in the complaint that a multi-storey building has been built with the money instead of a theatre which was proposed earlier and many properties were also bought in Ethiopia with the money.

An SOG investigation also reveals that a large amount of money has been deposited into accounts of Shekhawat and his wife at different time spans, said sources.

Earlier, Shekhawat was not mentioned in the chargesheet filed by the SOG in connection with the case. Later, a magistrate's court also rejected the application to include him in the chargesheet. The applicants then approached the additional district judge's court with a revised application.

New Delhi, Jan 24: Although India's Ujjwala programme encouraged adoption of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) for cooking among the poor, households availing the scheme have not shifted away from using highly polluting fuels like firewood, a study reveals.

The researchers, including those from the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Canada, found that additional incentives to encourage regular use of cooking gas are necessary for a complete transition to clean cooking fuel among poor rural households.

They noted that about 2.9 billion people across Asia, Africa, and Latin America burn solid fuels like firewood to meet their cooking energy needs.

This has significant negative implications for public health, the environment, and societal development, according to the researchers.

Through the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY), India has provided capital cost subsidies to poor women to adopt a clean-burning cooking fuel or LPG.

The researchers explained that within the first 40 months of the scheme, more than 80 million households obtained LPG stoves.

However, the full benefits of LPG adoption depend on near complete replacement of polluting fuels with LPG, according to a research-based policy brief published in the journal Nature Energy.

The scientists said this cannot be assumed solely on the basis of LPG presence in the household.

"Our research shows that Ujjwala was able to attract new consumers rapidly, but those consumers did not start using LPG on a regular basis," Abhishek Kar, a postdoc at Columbia University in the US, told PTI.

The study analysed LPG sales data for over 25,000 consumers, including PMUY beneficiaries, as well as general rural LPG consumers in Koppal district of Karnataka.

The scientists employed data covering all LPG purchases of PMUY beneficiaries through their first year in the programme.

They also assessed the general rural population's purchases during their first five years as consumers to assess the effect of experience on use.

The findings estimate that an average rural family needs to purchase five 14.2 kilogramme-cylinders annually to meet half of their cooking needs.

However, the study said just seven per cent of PMUY beneficiaries in Koppal purchased five or more cylinders annually, suggesting that the beneficiaries seldom use LPG.

The general (nonPMUY) consumers in this region use on average two times more LPG cylinders than PMUY beneficiaries, the researchers noted.

Yet, only 45 per cent of nonPMUY consumers use five or more cylinders per year -- even after several years of experience with LPG, they said.

The team assessed price and seasonal factors affecting LPG use among the general population over a three-year period.

It found that LPG consumers are sensitive to price and seasonality -- LPG cylinder refill rates are lower in the summer when agricultural activity is limited, and cash is scarce.

"There was no scheme incentives to promote use, except general LPG subsidies which is available to all, including the urban middle class," said Kar, who was a Ph.D. scholar at UBC when the research was published.

"If there is no additional income, what cost would a poor family on an already tight budget cut to pay for an extra expense on a regular basis.

"Ujjwala has started the scheme of 5 kg-cylinder in response, but the impact of that on LPG sales is still publicly unknown," he said.

These findings, the researchers noted, suggest the need for additional measures to promote regular LPG use for all rural populations.

Although the finding come from a single district in Southern India, it may also apply to other areas with similar socio-economic conditions, they said.

A more expansive evaluation of PMUY would help design targeted incentives to transform infrequent users to regular users, according to the researchers.