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Dear parents, if you want your children to have proper sleep, read this carefully. Joining a growing list of studies that tell parents to shun devices at bed-time, researchers say that children who use devices and decide what time they go to sleep, achieve less sleep and feel more sleepier the following day than their peers.

The study of children in this age-group (aged 11 to 13 years), published in the New Zealand Medical Journal, found most (72 per cent) of the 163 students interviewed by University of Otago researchers achieved recommended guidelines of an average 9 to 11 hours sleep nightly over one week.

"But that also means that almost one in four students did not achieve sleep within these guidelines, which highlights an area for improvement," said study researcher Kate Ford.

However, consistent with previous research in 15 to 17-year-old New Zealanders, the study results show less sleep on the nights where devices are used in the hour before bed.

According to the researchers, students who used devices before going to sleep were also more likely to report that they felt sleepy the following morning. Watching television before bed had no significant effect on sleep length.

There were also some interesting observations over the weekends where students went to bed later but woke later achieving similar sleep length to the school days, the researchers said.

A small group of students (six per cent) who reported less than seven hours of sleep, including a small number reporting not sleeping at all, according to the study,

Therefore, while the average across the week of 72 per cent of students reporting adequate sleep is reassuring, it is far from the goal of every child achieving sleep within the recommended guidelines," Ford said.

Dr Paul Kelly, head of the Sleep Health Service at Canterbury District Health Board, supervised the study and explained that the foundations for good health are based on proper nutrition, regular exercise and good sleep quality.

Sleep quality is often overlooked as a contributory factor to poor health.

"The study findings suggest the need for parental guidance around bedtimings and moderation of the use and availability of electronic devices before bed," Kelly said.

"Respect and protect your sleep, as good daytime functioning is reliant on adequate sleep," Kelly added.

17-year-old Pratyusha Jha, wakes up scrambling for newspapers these days to look for any news about her pending board exams and is anxious about what the future has in store for her.

Similar concerns are shared by Bipin Kumar, a class 12 student, who says the announcement of board exams from July 1 to 15 brought limited clarity as the larger questions remain unanswered.

The COVID-19 lockdown, came with a different set of concerns for class 12 students, whose board exams were postponed midway following the outbreak of coronavirus, putting on hold their future plans as well.

"Everyday I have been looking for news about the exams and about entrance exam dates. I feel unfortunate that this happened during the year I was supposed to take the big college leap. I don't want my future decisions to be shaped by this very year as what I opt to study now will remain with me lifelong," Pratyusha told PTI.

Ending some uncertainty for students, HRD Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal 'Nishank' on Friday announced that the pending class 10 and 12 board exams will be held from July 1 to 15. While class 12 exams will be conducted across the country, the class 10 exams are only pending in North East Delhi where they were affected due to the law and order situation.

"The anxiety doesn't end here, there is no date sheet yet. What will be the modalities of exams, how will we reach centres, what protocols have to be followed, there is no clarity on that. My friends and I keep calling our school teachers and also the CBSE helpline to seek some clarity," Bipin Kumar said.

Vaibhav Sharma, a class 12 student in Gurgaon said, "There is no clarity yet. I wanted to apply for DU, but now that the exams are taking place in July when will the results be declared, when will cut offs be announced. If I don't get a good college here, will I be able to travel to different cities for admission, nothing is known yet."

Similarly, for the students in northeast Delhi, the wait for the exams has become a "test of patience" as they were postponed first in the area due to law and order situation, and later due to the coronavirus outbreak, resulting in a four-month-long wait for the exams.

"It has become an endless wait and now I don't feel like studying too. Right from childhood, we are taught that board exams are too crucial and have to be focussed at least two years in advance. But now, it is a different picture altogether," Rani Kumari, a resident of Chandbagh said.

Universities and schools across the country have been closed and exams postponed since March 16 when the Centre announced a countrywide classroom shutdown as one of the measures to contain the COVID-19 outbreak.

Later, a nationwide lockdown was announced on March 24, which has now been extended till May 17.

The board was not able to conduct class 10 and 12 exams on eight examination days due to the coronavirus outbreak. Further, due to the law and order situation in North East Delhi, the board was not able to conduct exams on four examination days, while a very small number of students from and around this district were not able to appear in exams on six days.

The board had last month announced that it will only conduct pending exams in 29 subjects which are crucial for promotion and admission to higher educational institutions. The modalities of assessment for the subjects for which exams are not being conducted will be announced soon by the board.

The schedule has been decided in order to ensure that the board exams are completed before competitive examinations such as engineering entrance JEE-Mains, which is scheduled from July 18-23, and medical entrance exam NEET, which is scheduled on July 26.

The University Grants Commission (UGC) has issued guidelines to universities that new academic session for freshers will begin from September while for the existing students from August.

Early treatment with the antiviral drug remdesivir has been found to reduce viral load and prevent lung disease in macaques infected with SARS-CoV-2 that causes COVID-19, according to a study.

The findings, published in the journal Nature on Tuesday, support the early use of remdesivir treatment in patients with COVID-19 to prevent progression to pneumonia.

Researchers from the National Institutes of Health in the US noted that remdesivir has broad antiviral activity and has been shown to be effective against infections with SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV in animal models.

The drug is being tested in human clinical trials for the treatment of COVID-19, they said.

Researcher Emmie de Wit and colleagues investigated the effects of remdesivir treatment in rhesus macaques, a recently established model of SARS-CoV-2 infection.

Two sets of six macaques were inoculated with SARS-CoV-2.

One group was treated with remdesivir 12 hours later -- close to the peak of virus reproduction in the lungs -- and these macaques received treatment every 24 hours until six days after inoculation.

In contrast to the control group, the researchers found that macaques that received remdesivir did not show signs of respiratory disease, and had reduced damage to the lungs.

Viral loads in the lower respiratory tract were also reduced in the treated animals; viral levels were around 100 times lower in the lower-respiratory tract of remdesivir-treated macaques 12 hours after the first dose, they said.

The researchers said that infectious virus could no longer be detected in the treatment group three days after initial infection, but was still detectable in four out of six control animals.

Despite this virus reduction in the lower respiratory tract, no reduction in virus shedding was observed, which indicates that clinical improvement may not equate to a lack of infectiousness, they said.

Dosing of remdesivir in the rhesus macaques is equivalent to that used in humans, the researchers noted.

They cautioned that it is difficult to directly translate the timing of treatment used in corresponding disease stages in humans, because rhesus macaques normally develop only mild disease.

However, researchers said the results indicate that remdesivir treatment of COVID-19 should be initiated as early as possible to achieve the maximum treatment effect.