UK in early stages of 3rd wave, fears top scientist

A top Indian-origin scientist advising the British government has warned that there are signs that the UK is in the early stages of a “third wave” of coronavirus infections and urged PM Boris Johnson to delay the planned June 21 reopening by a few weeks, according to a media report on Monday.

Ravi Gupta of University of Cambridge, who is a member of the government’s New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (Nervtag), said although new cases were “relatively low”, the Covid-19 variant first detected in India has fuelled “exponential growth”, the BBC reported.

On Sunday, the UK reported over 3,000 new Covid-19 cases for a fifth day in a row.

Gupta said the UK was seeing a third wave of infections and at

LONDON:

least three-quarters of the cases were the new variant first found in India. “The number of cases is relatively low. All waves start with a low number of cases... and then become explosive. So the key here is that what we are seeing are the signs of an early wave,” he said.

PM Johnson, meanwhile, said he wants the G7 to reach a deal on Covid-19 vaccine passports and open talks on a “world treaty” to prepare for future pandemics in next month’s summit. He will host a June 11-13 G7 summit in Cornwall, England.

In Brussels, the European Commission said fully vaccinated EU residents should be exempted from quarantine when travelling within the bloc. The EU executive’s update to its non-binding travel advisory was unveiled a week before EU legislation on a digital EU Covid certificate is set to be passed.

The Pacific nation of Palau reported its first confirmed case on Monday.

WHO members agree to strengthen global body

WHO members have agreed to strengthen the global body at the heart of the pandemic response. The 194 member states, in a 14-page resolution on the last day of the virtual annual World Health Assembly, also agreed to “strengthen the WHO’S capacity to rapidly and appropriately assess disease outbreaks”.

Japan, meanwhile, approved Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine for those aged 12-15 years on Monday, the media reported.

READ: Vietnam to test all 9mn residents of Ho Chi Minh city manufacturing (6.9%) saw the biggest sequential improvement in growth. The labour-intensive service sectors of trade, hotels, transport, communication and broadcasting services remained in contraction zone (2.3%) despite a significant improvement in mobility levels in the quarter. Agriculture grew at 3.1%, a moderation compared to the 4.5% growth seen in the quarter ending December 2020. Private final consumption expenditure came out of the contraction zone for the first time in 2020-21 in the quarter ending March 2021 with a growth of 2.7%. Government final consumption expenditure jumped by massive 28.3%. Gross Fixed Capital Formation, which measures investment , grew by 10.9%.

“The better-than-expected growth print partly owes it to healthy corporate results in March quarter of FY21. We admit the situation is still in a flux, and it is too nascent to gauge the true impact of the second wave on macro variables. We believe that the impact is unlikely to be of the same magnitude as last year,” said Madhavi Arora, lead economist, Emkay Global Financial Services. But the numbers may have been overtaken by the second wave.

“The March quarter numbers have been rendered irrelevant because of the disruption due to the second wave of Covid-19 infections, as far as economic momentum is concerned. With most states extending lockdowns into June, the first quarter of 2020-21 will be disappointing”, said Himanshu, an associate professor of economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University. “Also, NSO itself has flagged the possibility of revision on the last quarter’s numbers because extension of statutory filing deadlines could have introduced a favourable bias in the corporate sector performance statistics.” Chief Economic Adviser Krishnamurthy Subramanian admitted that

LE LARDIN-SAINT-LAZARE, FRANCE:

Police in southwest France on Monday detained a former soldier who fled into a forest after firing on security forces in an incident that sparked a massive manhunt, officials said.

The government’s top official in the Dordogne region, Frederic Perissat, told a press conference in Le Lardin-saint-lazare that the suspect was shot and wounded after exchanging fire with police, and had been taken into custody.

His injuries are “serious”, said Andre Petillot, the head of the “gendarme” armed police for the Nouvelle-aquitaine region, who added that no officers had been wounded.

Authorities had released earlier on Monday a photo of the suspect, Terry Dupin, describing the bearded 29-year-old as a “dangerous individual”. momentum of economic recovery has been affected by the second wave and “continued monetary and fiscal policy support” are needed to boost growth.

“Overall economic impact of the second wave is not likely to be very large” but “localised or statewide restrictions adopted to combat its spread, present some downside risk to growth” in the first quarter of 2021-22, he added. The wave has peaked, he pointed out, and “the pace of decline is as fast as the rise”. He, however, stressed on the need to enhance pace of vaccination coverage and strict observation of Covid-appropriate behaviour.

Still, the impact could make itself felt in the overall GDP growth number for the year.

“The combination of Covid’s second wave and the revised base effect may imply a lower GDP growth for the Indian economy for 2021-22, which may be in the range of 9-9.5%.” Indeed, as Alok Sheel, RBI chair professor in macroeconomics at Indian Council for Research in International Economic Relations (ICRIER) said, “the consensus number for this is now down to below 10% on account of the severity of the second wave of Covid 19.”

ground” as it flagged several areas of concern, asking why states had to pay more than the Centre for the vaccine, and how the Centre planned to ensure people in rural areas could get the vaccine when registration on the COWIN digital platform was mandatory. Appearing for the Centre, solicitor general Tushar Mehta informed the court that the Centre expected to vaccinate the entire population of the country by the end of this year, as he also sought to justify the dual pricing of vaccines. About mandatory registration on Cowin, the SG said it was done in view of limited health infrastructure and to avoid overcrowding at centres.

But the bench, which included justices L Nageswara Rao and S Ravindra Bhat, remained unimpressed with the submissions and regretted that the Centre did not seem to have paid heed to suggestions mooted by the court in its April 30 order on vaccine pricing and rural health care.

“You smell the coffee and see what’s happening across the country and change your policies. It cannot be a day-to-day ad hoc response to as and when problems occur. Absent guidelines and absent policy, you will have ad hoc decisions. There has to be a clear-cut policy of decision making and a vision for the present and for the future, which is perhaps lacking today. We will like your policy to be amended,” it said. Asking the government to show a “little bit of flexibility”, the court said that it was not enough for the Centre to claim only it knew what was best for the people and that they must also remember that “our arms are strong enough to come down” if there was continued resistance to consider changes. “...Ability to recognise that we have gone wrong is not a sign of weakness but a sign of strength. Our idea is to initiate a dialogue so that we can strengthen the arms of the nation,” said the bench, giving the government two weeks to come back with a detailed response. It emphasised that the Union government ought to negotiate globally and procure vaccines for the entire country “in a national crisis” rather than leaving states in the lurch.

“What is the rationale behind this dual pricing policy? Centre procures at a certain price but does not want to tell the manufacturers at what price they should give it to states. If the Centre can justify its lower pricing due to block supply, why cannot it procure the vaccines for the states under the same rationale? Ultimately,

you have to ensure everyone gets vaccinated at the same price for all sections,” it said.

The bench added that the criterion of those aged above 45 years being the vulnerable class for Covid-19 has witnessed a change with many less than 45 losing their lives due to the virus in the second wave. “Can there be a justification for the Centre to now say that we will only take care of those who are above 45? We are aware that we don’t have time to enter the realm of policy making but your policy has to be logical and reasonable,” said the bench, asking the SG to get unequivocal instructions on the next date if the Centre was ready to act like a national body for procurement of vaccines.

It further asked Mehta if it was realistically possible for all those in rural areas and the marginalised to register themselves on the COWIN platform.

“What about the digital divide? You can keep saying Digital India, Digital India. Digital India is alright but can a poor migrant worker from Jharkhand or from Rajasthan get himself registered on COWIN? Is that possible? How are you answering the digital divide? How are you going to ensure migrant workers can get themselves registered and get vaccinated?” it asked. While the SG said that walk-in registrations have begun in some circumstances, the bench pointed out there is no policy on record regarding this or to show how and why the Union government decided to usher in differential pricing of vaccines for the 18-45 age group.

“You cannot say if you don’t register on COWIN, we will not vaccinate you. Ground reality is that 70% of vaccination is only in urban areas. Vaccines are not reaching the rural areas. If there is a policy document, we want to see what is the policy in black and white. We don’t want to go by the affidavit to say it is evolving; it is dynamic, etc. We want to see what’s the rationale,” it told the SG. It added that no policy was carved in stone and that the government’s new policy had to meet the test of reasonableness and equality, apart from ensuring right to life that included right to public health.

“You have to have a policy which is clear-cut, deal with all the issues and provide guidance to states and other institutions in terms of not only present but also in terms of the future. We will also request you to produce the policy document along with the file noting on it. So that we know what prompted you to change the previous policy. The only issue that we are seeing today is that of vaccination policy. The dialogue will continue. If you change the policy, well,” it said. The bench said it will issue an order on the proceedings but it was not released Monday.

that the World Health Organization did not refer to the variant first found in the country as “Indian”, a day after WHO labelled it as a variant of concern. Later, on May 26, the Union government asked social media companies to scrub the words “Indian variant” from their services. In an advisory issued in 2015, the WHO cautioned against naming new infectious diseases in a manner that leads to negative effects on nations, economies and people.

“In recent years, several new human infectious diseases have emerged. The use of names such as ‘swine flu’ and ‘Middle East Respiratory Syndrome’ has had unintended negative impacts... This may seem like a trivial issue to some, but disease names really do matter to the people who are directly affected. We’ve seen certain disease names provoke a backlash against members of particular religious or ethnic communities, create unjustified barriers