Mumbai, Jan 18: Maharashtra Tourism Minister Aaditya Thackeray on Friday said shops, restaurants, malls and pubs will remain open 24 hours on an experimental basis in a few areas of Mumbai from January 26.
The areas where these establishments will remain open all night are Fort and Kala Ghoda in south Mumbai and Bandra Kurla Complex in the west.
Thackeray had batted for all-night-open eateries and other establishments in the city during the earlier BJP-Shiv Sena regime too.
Thiruvananthapuram, Apr 23: Amid opposition charges, the Kerala government on Tuesday constituted a two-member committee to examine whether the privacy of personal and sensitive data of COVID-19 patients has been protected under the agreement entered by it with US-based IT firm Sprinklr.
The committee, headed by former Special IT Sscretary M Madhavan Nambiar and former health secretary Rajeev Sadanandan, will also ascertain whether adequate procedures were followed while finalising the arrangements with the private company.
The Opposition Congress has been levelling charges that the collection of data by the US firm violated the fundamental rights of the patients.
In its order, state government said it had initiated steps to set up a Data Analytics platform to integrate data from various sources available in the government to meet the "exigency of a massive and unprecedented surge of epidemic".
The committee will also examine whether deviations, if any, are fair, justified and reasonable considering the extraordinary and critical situation faced by the state, it said.
Meanwhile, the Kerala High Court on Tuesday asked the state government to file its reply by April 24 on a plea seeking to quash its contract with the US-based firm.
Expressing concern over the confidentiality of the citizen's data processed by a third party, the court sought to know why the sanction of the law department was not taken before finalising the agreement.
The court hailed the state government's fight against COVID-19, but said it is concerned about data confidentiality.
The government informed the court that the agreement with Sprinklr has safeguards for data protection "as per standard practices of software as a service model."
The ward-level committees, set up by the government for the anti-coronavirus fight, collect information of those under home isolation, the elderly and those at the risk of the disease, using a questionnaire and later uploads it on the server of the private agency.
New Delhi, Mar 20: The government on Thursday said one Indian who tested positive for coronavirus has died in Iran while the other citizens infected with the disease are being provided treatment and taken care of by the Iranian government.
Noting that the virus tends to be more fatal for those whose immunity levels are low, a senior MEA official said the deceased, an elderly person, belonged to the vulnerable age group and had health-related complications.
The death was not because of lack of medical attention or care, he said.
"We have evacuated 590 people from Iran where the situation is very severe. The Indians infected with coronavirus in Iran have been segregated and taken care of very well by the government there. We believe they will recover and we will bring them back," the MEA official said, adding that 201 Indians were evacuated from Iran on Wednesday.
The official said closely knit families required some persuasion and counselling during the process of segregation to prevent the spread of the contagion.
The Indian ambassador and other officials explained the consequences of infected people not being separated from their families and were successful to a large extent in segregating the positive cases from the negative ones, he said.
"Some pilgrims and students are still there and our embassy and mission are in control (of the situation)," the official said.
New Delhi, Jun 25: After the Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) given its approval to manufacture and market the generic version of COVID-19 drug Remdesivir, COVIFOR, Hyderabad-based drugmaker Hetero Limited has delivered the first set of 20,000 vials in two equal lots of 10,000 each across 5 states.
The first batch, which is being marketed under the brand name of COVIFOR, was delivered to Maharashtra, Delhi, Gujarat Tamil Nadu and Hyderabad. Hetero has set a target to produce one lakh vials of the drug in two-three weeks.
The other lot would be supplied to Kolkata, Indore, Bhopal, Lucknow, Patna, Bhubaneshwar, Ranchi, Vijayawada, Cochin, Trivandrum and Goa within a week to meet the emergency requirements.
Managing director of Hetero Healthcare M Srinivasa Reddy said “the launch of Covifor in the country is a milestone in addressing public health emergencies. Through Covifor, we hope to reduce the treatment time of a patient in a hospital thereby reducing the increasing pressure on the medical infrastructure overburdened ue to accelerating COVID-19 infection rates," he said as reported by news agency.
"We are closely working with the government and the medical community to make Covifor quickly accessible to both public and private healthcare settings across the country”, Reddy said.
Covifor is a generic brand of Remdesivir which is used for the treatment of COVID-19 in adults and children hospitalised with strong symptoms of the disease. The Health Ministry had, on June 13, recommended the use of anti-viral drug Remdesivir in moderate stage of COVID-19.
Dr Reddys Laboratories and Hetero are among others which have separately entered into non-exclusive licensing agreements with the original drug-maker Gilead Sciences Inc to register, make and sell the investigational drug Remdesivir in India and other countries.
Remdesivir would be made in the company's formulation facility in Hyderabad, which has been approved by global regulatory authorities such as US Food and Drug Administration (USFDA) and EU, among others, Hetero had earlier said.
The treatment first showed improvement in trials on coronavirus patients and was approved for emergency use in severely ill patients in the United States and South Korea.
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