Mangaluru, Jun 15: The case of two elderly Dubai returnees who are being treated for Covid-19 at the Wenlock Covid-19 Hospital has left doctors perplexed.
The two aged 76 and 81 men had arrived from Dubai on May 18 and 12 respectively and are at the hospital since one month.
To everyone's surprise, six of their tests have come out positive though they have not shown any symptoms of SARS-CoV-2.
Bengaluru, May 24: A couple got married in Bengaluru today, even as Karnataka government has announced a complete lockdown on Sundays, as part of the fourth phase of COVID-19 shutdown till the end of this month.
The marriage ceremony on this Sunday was possible thanks to a clarification given by the state government for marriages, which has been already scheduled for May 24 and May 31 to be exempted from the Sunday complete lockdown.
At today's wedding, the rituals were performed with compliance of all guidelines including ensuring social distancing and capping the number of guests at 50.
Satish, the groom said, "Government has allowed weddings with up to 50 people in attendance but we decided to invite only 25 people to the ceremony".
Meanwhile, in the Honnali Honnali area of Davanagere, BJP MLA MP Renukacharya distributed masks to three newly-wed couples.
As per an earlier advisory issued by the State government more than 50 guests, no air conditioning, and the consumption of liquor and paan are among the guidelines to be followed for holding weddings in the state. Also, people aged above 65 and below 10 as well as pregnant women have been barred from participating in the event.
According to the advisory, sanitisers should be provided at the entry and other appropriate places at the venue. Also, thermal screening of all persons shall be conducted at the entry of the venue. The scanner should be held 3-15 cms away from a person's forehead.
Apart from this, the venue shall be "clean and hygienic," and a "nodal person shall be identified for overseeing the arrangements and coordination at the venue." Also, a list of attendees with contact details has to be maintained and all guests should have downloaded Aarogya Setu app.
Udupi, Jul 8: A 15-year-old boy belonging to Saligrama in Udupi district, who was under home quarantine with his mother, allegedly committed suicide by hanging himself yesterday.
His throat swabs were sent for testing. The report received today and it showed that he did not have coronavirus.
The boy, a class ten student studying in Kota, was quarantined along with his mother at home after a person in a family, where she was working as a maid tested positive for Covid-19.
The boy is suspected to have taken the extreme step out of depression as he was not allowed to go out. The last rites were held today.
The current physical distancing guidelines provided by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) may not be adequate to curb the coronavirus spread, according to a research which says the gas cloud from a cough or sneeze may help virus particles travel up to 8 metres. The research, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, noted that the the current guidelines issued by the WHO and CDC are based on outdated models from the 1930s of how gas clouds from a cough, sneeze, or exhalation spread.
Study author, MIT associate professor Lydia Bourouiba, warned that droplets of all sizes can travel 23 to 27 feet, or 7-8 metres, carrying the pathogen.
According to Bourouiba, the current guidelines are based on "arbitrary" assumptions of droplet size, "overly simplified", and "may limit the effectiveness of the proposed interventions" against the deadly pandemic.
She explained that the old guidelines assume droplets to be one of two categories, small or large, taking short-range semi-ballistic trajectories when a person exhales, coughs, or sneezes.
However based on more recent discoveries, the MIT scientist said, sneezes and coughs are made of a puff cloud that carries ambient air, transporting within it clusters of droplets of a wide range of sizes.
Bourouiba warned that this puff cloud, with ambient air entrapped in it, can offer the droplets moisture and warmth that can prevent it from evaporation in the outer environment.
"The locally moist and warm atmosphere within the turbulent gas cloud allows the contained droplets to evade evaporation for much longer than occurs with isolated droplets," she said.
"Under these conditions, the lifetime of a droplet could be considerably extended by a factor of up to 1000, from a fraction of a second to minutes," the researcher explained in the study.
The MIT scientist, who has researched the dynamics of coughs and sneezes for years, added that these droplets settle along the trajectory of a cough or sneeze contaminating surfaces, with their residues staying suspended in the air for hours.
"Even when maximum containment policies were enforced, the rapid international spread of COVID-19 suggests that using arbitrary droplet size cutoffs may not accurately reflect what actually occurs with respiratory emissions, possibly contributing to the ineffectiveness of some procedures used to limit the spread of respiratory disease," Bourouiba wrote in the study
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