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Firstpost March 18, 2020 There are 72 functional Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) laboratories conducting tests for coronavirus and private NABL-accredited labs will soon be operationalised across the country, ICMR director general Balram Bhargava on Tuesday said. He also appealed to all private laboratories to offer COVID-19 diagnosis free of cost.  "We have 72 functional ICMR laboratories in government sector for testing and 49 more will be active by the month end," he said. Bhargava said that India was in stage 2 or local transmission of the virus.  "All asymptomatic patients who have taken international flights in the past 14 days should get tested as per current protocol if they develop symptoms," he said. He also said that symptomatic people who come in close contact with laboratory-confirmed coronavirus cases must be tested, adding and all healthcare workers managing respiratory condition of patients should be tested too if sympto

Hindustan Times March 17, 2020 French Finance Minister  Bruno Le Maire,   warned Tuesday the country faced recession this year as he announced a 45-billion euro ($50-billion) aid package to help businesses and employees cope with the coronavirus crisis. The government, due to present a series of further support measures shortly, will base them “on a growth forecast of minus one percent, that is to say negative growth,” Le Maire told RTL radio. The forecast was “provisional,” he added. Le Maire described the struggle against the coronavirus pandemic as an “economic and financial war” that will last some time. “It will be lengthy, it will be violent... this war will require us to mobilise all our forces,” he said. Reference :  https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/france-sees-recession-announces-45-bn-euros-in-coronavirus-business-aid/story-ckS9f7zVU5NGUy5VS7S8vM.html

Business Today March 05, 2020 Extending gains for the third straight day, shares of Indian pharma companies were trading as top gainers in early trade amid rising concerns over shortages of generic drugs in India due to coronavirus outbreak in China. As fears of coronavirus-led economic slowdown mounts, the pharma industry has assured the government that there are enough drugs and medicines to deal with any contingency arising out of the impact of the deadly virus. As of now, 29 people, including 16 foreigners, have been infected by the COVID-19 virus in India. Barring shares of Piramal Enterprises that fell around 0.3%, all the 9 other healthcare shares were trading higher on Nifty Pharma, that was up 0.78% at 8,200. On Nifty Pharma, Cadila Healthcare was the top gainer, rising 4.7%, followed by 2% gain in Divi's Laboratories. Biocon gained 1.68%, while Dr Reddy's  and Sun Pharma were up 1%. Aurobindo Pharma, Cipla and Glenmark Pharmaceuticals gained in the

Washington Post March 14,2020 After the first case of covid-19, the disease caused by the new strain of coronavirus, was announced in the United States, reports of further infections trickled in slowly. Two months later, that trickle has turned into a steady current. This so-called exponential curve has experts worried. If the number of cases were to continue to double every three days, there would be about a hundred million cases in the United States by May. That is math, not prophecy. The spread can be slowed, public health professionals say, if people practice “social distancing” by avoiding public spaces and generally limiting their movement. Still, without any measures to slow it down, covid-19 will continue to spread exponentially for months. To understand why, it is instructive to simulate the spread of a fake disease through a population. We will call our fake disease simulitis. It spreads even more easily than covid-19: whenever a healthy person comes i

Livemint March 17,2020 Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor Shaktikanta Das on Monday assured all depositors of Yes Bank Ltd that their money is safe and there is no reason to withdraw cash in panic. Yes Bank has enough liquidity and RBI is ready to provide liquidity support to the bank if required, Das said. “I want to tell depositors that their money is completely safe. No reason for panic withdrawal or undue worry," he said. The assurance comes ahead of the lifting of a moratorium on Yes Bank at 6pm on Wednesday. On 5 March, RBI imposed a moratorium on Yes Bank and superseded its board, capping all withdrawals by depositors at ₹50,000. Das said that this is the first instance of a public-private partnership to revive a crisis-hit bank. Unlike previous instances, RBI chose not to merge a stressed bank with a strong bank. Instead, it prepared a rescue plan under which an eight-member consortium, led by State Bank of India (SBI), invested ₹10,000 crore into the

Livemint march 17,2020 Private sector lender RBL Bank on Tuesday said it has lost about 3% of its total deposits in the last one week owing to withdrawals by institutional depositors and a couple of state government organizations. There was no material impact on retail deposits. As of 31 December, the bank’s total deposits stood at ₹62,907 crore, of which ₹16,855 crore were in current and savings account (CASA). “However, this issue is being addressed by us on a one-on-one basis with the state governments and also at the industry levels by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). In spite of this, we remain highly liquid with significant retail deposits, institutional lines, refinance, and surplus liquid assets," the bank said in a statement. Last week, the central bank wrote to state governments, advising them against moving their deposits from private sector banks. This came in the wake of concerns regarding the health of private sector lenders after the RBI imposed

Livemint March 17,2020 Japanese and South Korean equities tumbled after Wall Street stocks plunged the most since 1987, and Australian bond yields gained as traders continue to rush for cash. The S&P 500 Index sank 12% Monday, erasing its gain for 2019, after President Donald Trump warned of a possible recession, with economic disruption from the coronavirus potentially extending into summer. U.S. futures fluctuated between gains and losses Tuesday, while Treasury yields edged up. The yen dipped. Crude oil traded near $29 a barrel after plunging almost 10% in New York. “You’ve never been in a scenario where you shut down the entire economy," said Steve Chiavarone, a portfolio manager with Federated Investors. “You get a sense in your stomach that we don’t know how to price this and that markets could fall more." The Federal Reserve and other central banks have dramatically stepped up efforts to stabilize capital markets and liquidity, yet the moves hav

The Telegraph March 17, 2020 Telangana on Monday formally joined the states and Union Territories that have opposed the National Population Register (NPR) in its current format. Altogether, the 11 states and two Union Territories represent about 53 per cent of the country’s population, according to the 2011 Census. In 2011, India’s population stood at 121 crore, and the population of these 11 states and two Union Territories together was 63.97 crore. With the adoption of a resolution against the citizenship matrix of CAA-NPR-NRC by the Assembly, Telangana joined the ranks of Kerala, Punjab, Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Puducherry, Delhi and Bihar. The Houses in all these places have passed resolutions on different aspects of the citizenship alphabet soup. The Telangana Assembly adopted a resolution that urged the state government to “take all necessary steps to safeguard the people of Telangana from exercises such as the NPR and the NRC”. It also re

The Telegraph March 17, 2020 Telecom players may finally hope for some relief with the Centre moving the Supreme Court on Monday to seek its approval to give a 20-year window to the telcos to pay their AGR dues in annual instalments.  Telecom companies owe Rs 1.47 lakh crore in adjusted gross revenue (AGR) to the government. “All licensees impacted by the judgment (October 2019) of the court be allowed to pay the unpaid or remaining to be paid amount of past DoT assessed dues in annual installments over 20 years, duly protecting the net present value of the said dues using a discount rate of 8 per cent (based on one-year marginal cost of lending rate of the SBI which is currently 7.75 per cent),” the application filed by the department of telecom (DoT) in the apex court said. The DoT has said the interest on the principal and penalty not be charged beyond the judgment date, while dues payable to the government be protected by a levy of 8 per cent interest on staggered payme

The Telegraph March 17, 2020 The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Monday took a number of measures to ramp up liquidity in the economy, spooked by the coronavirus, but dashed expectations of a rate cut at its hurriedly called press conference in the afternoon even as central banks across the world announced a string of co-ordinated actions ranging from policy rate cuts to accelerated dollar swaps and purchases of risky assets. The apex bank on Monday undertook a $2-billion sell/buy (swap) auction and said it would conduct another one for the same amount on March 23. Besides, the central bank said it would continue to conduct long-term repo operations (LTROs) of up to Rs 1 lakh crore as and when the market needed it. The RBI has already conducted four rounds of LTROs since February 14. Expectations have been swirling over the RBI going for a rate cut to fight the prolonged slowdown and the adverse impact of the coronavirus, especially after its peers elsewhere were furious

The Telegraph March 17,2020 The rapid progression of the Covid-19 infection from China to some, and then most, countries is an unprecedented global shock. Its full-blown eruption was characterized pandemic by the WHO last week. Markets have been tailspinning since and the virus ructions have challenged governments’ ability to retain control and stay ahead of the curve to manage the pandemic. The central response worldwide is to ‘lockdown’, quarantine and advise ‘social distancing’. It is probably the most sensible and effective response to achieve maximum health safety and save lives. The irony is that what is optimal for the pandemic is economically most damaging — lockdowns that will deliver the best outcomes will also inflict the most ruthless economic devastation. It would not be out of place to say that the better the pandemic results, the higher the economic sacrifice. Economic consequences will be disproportionately high relative to the pandemic anguish because of the co

The Telegraph March 14, 2020 Corona victims in Italy will be denied access to intensive care if they are aged 80 or more or in poor health should pressure on beds increase, a document prepared by a crisis management unit in Turin proposes. Some patients denied intensive care will in effect be left to die, doctors fear. The unit has drawn up a protocol, seen by The Telegraph, that will determine which patients receive treatment in intensive care and which do not if there are insufficient spaces. Intensive care capacity is running short in Italy as the coronavirus continues to spread. The document, produced by the civil protection deparment of the Piedmont region, one of those hardest hit, says: "The criteria for access to intensive therapy in cases of emergency must include age of less than 80 or a score on the Charlson comorbidity Index [which indicates how many other medical conditions the patient has] of less than 5."The ability of the patient to recover fro