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People’s WhatsApp status are like Instagram/Facebook stories. If people check your WhatsApp Status you'll get to know when you check the list. But there's how to see others’ status without letting them know.
Technology News: WhatsApp status’ work a bit like Facebook and Instagram stories. They stay for twenty-four hours and you'll add multiple status updates a bit like it's with stories on the other two Facebook-owned platforms.
But like on Instagram you'll make a group of close friends and share stories that just they will see, incase you would like to keep some content away from those who follow you there, WhatsApp doesn't have that option. All contact on WhatsApp can see your status if you post one.
There are instances where you would possibly want to see someone’s status and not allow them to know - just as it'd happen on Facebook or Instagram. And there's an easy way to do it.
All you need to do to keep your profile from popping up on someone’s status checked-list os by turning off the Read receipt.
Go to Settings, click on ‘Privacy’ and turn off the Read receipts.
Now if you check someone’s status, he/she won't be able to see your name on the list of individuals . Easy.
Like it is with turning off Read receipts that removes the double blue tick from your messages, it also disappears for all of your chats and you don’t get to know if others have read your messages or now - an equivalent also happens for the WhatsApp status.
If you switch Read receipts off, you'll also not be able to see who all have checked your status.
So you would like to make a decision what’s important to you then take the plunge. in fact it’s as easy to undo it as it is to do it. you'll always return into your settings and turn on Read receipts for things to return to normal.
A real sneaky ebay to do things would be to toggle the Read receipts off whenever you would like to see someone’s status and not allow them to know then turn it on after 24 hours. But this whole process looks like way an excessive amount of work for far too little. People have been known to go to fascinating lengths though.
University of Oxford and AstraZeneca on Monday said that their Covid-19 vaccine was up to 90 per cent effective in late-stage clinical trials.
Image Source: Google
World News/Covid-19 Vaccine Tracker : The Serum Institute of India (SII) will apply for emergency license of Covid-19 vaccine within the next fortnight , said chief executive officer Adar Poonawalla on Saturday.
Speaking to reporters through virtual press conference minutes after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to SII’s facility in Pune on Saturday, Poonawalla said, the vaccine, post-authorization, will initially be distributed in India then to African countries.
“We are in process of applying for emergency licensing in the next two weeks. we will have to wait and see when we get the authorisation,” said Poonawalla while responding to an issue on Covishield vaccine’s distribution within the country.
“The vaccine will be distributed initially in India and then we will look at COVAX countries which are mainly in Africa. The united kingdom and European markets are being taken care of by AstraZeneca and Oxford. If they need our help for scaling up production capacity, we are always there to support them.”
The SII, the world’s largest vaccine maker, has signed an agreement to manufacture the vaccine developed by the Jenner Institute of Oxford University together with British-Swedish pharma company AstraZeneca.
University of Oxford and AstraZeneca on Monday said that their Covid-19 vaccine was up to 90 per cent effective in late-stage clinical trials, raising hopes for the arrival of shots in India by the end of the year.
According to Poonawalla, the Covishiled vaccine has proved effective during trials. “What we found in Covishield during trials globally was that there was zero hospitalisation and 60 per cent reduction in sterilizing immunity.”
Poonawala said during PM Modi’s visit to the manufacturing facility at SII, various issues about pricing and logistics also as pros and cons of other vaccine candidates were discussed.
The SII is currently producing 50-60 million doses per month and plans to proportion to 100 million doses by January next year.
“We are producing 50 to 60 million doses per month and post-January, it will be scaled up to 100 million doses a month. we have built the largest pandemic-level facility in Pune and our new campus in Mandri. That was also showcased to the PM with a tour around the facility and a lot of detailed discussions,” Poonawalla further mentioned.
On signing any deal with the govt of India, Poonawalla said there has been no contract signed with centre yet.
“As of now, we don’t have anything in writing on how many doses they will purchase but as indicated by the health ministry, they would need 300-400 million doses by July 2021,” said the SII CEO.
Poonawala also claimed the Oxford drug will be transported easily at normal refrigerator temperatures, unlike a number of the other candidates which require extreme cold storage.
Bollywood actor Anushka Sharma, who is expecting her first child, is currently shooting for endorsements.
Image Source: Google
Bollywood News: Anushka Sharma has resumed work in Mumbai amid the pandemic and is exercising precaution while she is on the sets. The actor is busy wrapping up her pending commitments before she welcomes her baby in January 2021.
Anushka is currently shooting for endorsements. “It has been great being on the set actually and meeting my entire team and soaking in the madness of shoots. In fact, I have loved being back on the sets and shooting. This year has been tough for our industry, but i am happy to see it restarting again with the same amount of passion and energy,” she said.
The soon-to-be mother was clear that she “was only ok to be on the sets, provided all safety precautions were met.”
Anushka said, “I had to be fully sure that the sets are going to be a safe place to shoot because i was shooting during the pandemic. Though i was looking forward to shooting again, i was also careful to understand all the COVID-19 precautions being taken.I am thankful to everyone for ensuring all the precautions are in place for me to shoot. The virus is here to stay and life has to embrace the new normal and deal with coronavirus with the strictest precaution which is what I have done in my case.”
Anushka Sharma states that she would really like to start out shooting films immediately after she delivers which she is going to return to doing full-fledged work by May 2021. “Being on the set brings me a lot of joy and I’m going to be shooting continuously for the next few days.I will be back shooting again once I deliver my first child. I intend to keep working for as long as I live because acting truly makes me happy,” concluded the actor.
India's pharmaceutical company Hetero ties up with Russian Direct Investment Fund
Sputnik V free in Russia, for other countries its price will be less than 700 rupees
India News/Covid-19 Vaccine Tracker:The Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) and India's pharmaceutical company Hetero have tied up to produce Corona's vaccine Sputnik V. This agreement is to make 100 million doses every year in India. Production will start from next year.
Sputnik V has been created by the Gameleya National Research Center for Epidemiology and Microbiology of Russia. RDIF is overseeing its production and promotion abroad. The clinical trial for the third phase of the vaccine has been approved. These trials are ongoing in many countries including Belarus, UAE, Venezuela. According to IDIF, the second and third phase trials are going on in India.
More than 50 countries have requested to make 120 million doses of this vaccine. The vaccine will be produced in India, China, Brazil, South Korea and other countries for supply in the global market.
'Big step in the fight against Corona'
Murali Krishna Reddy, Director, International Marketing, Hetero Labs Ltd, said Sputnik V is most effective in treating Kovid-19. We are very pleased with this partnership with RDIF to develop the vaccine. This partnership is another step towards fulfilling our commitment and the Make in India campaign in the fight against Corona.
At the same time, RDIF CEO Kirill Dmitriev said that we are happy to announce the agreement with Hetero. This will pave the way for the production of safe and most effective corona vaccine in India. Thank you for partnering with Hetero. This will help us to increase the production capacity and provide a better solution to the people of India in this challenging period of Corona.
Hetero has over 25 years of experience
Hyderabad based company Hetero is India's leading generic pharmaceutical company. It was founded in 1993 by Dr. BPS Reddy. It is the world's largest manufacturer of anti-retroviral drugs for the treatment of HIV / AIDS. The company has over 25 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry. Hetero's business spans 126 countries.
95% effective Sputnik vaccine
Sputnik has proven to be 95% effective in fighting corona during a trial. The second preliminary analysis of the clinical trial showed that 42 days after the first dose, it showed 95% efficacy. The data was 91.4% 28 days after the dose was given.It will also cost much less than other vaccines. People of Russia will get it for free. For other countries, its price will be less than 700 rupees.
Image Source: Google World News/Sports News:Diego Maradona, in full Diego Armando Maradona, (born October 30, 1960, Lanus, Buenos Aires, Argentina—died November 25, 2020, Tigre, Buenos Aires), Argentine football (soccer) player who is generally regarded as the top footballer of the 1980s and one of the greatest of all time. Renowned for his ability to control the ball and create scoring opportunities for himself and others, he led club teams to championships in Argentina, Italy, and Spain, and he starred on the Argentine national team that won the 1986 World Cup.
Image Source: Google
Maradona displayed football talent early, and at age eight he joined Las Cebollitas (“The Little Onions”), a boys’ team that went on to win 136 consecutive games and a national championship. He signed with Argentinos Juniors at age 14 and made his first-division debut in 1976, 10 days before his 16th birthday. Only four months later he made his debut with the national team, becoming the youngest Argentine ever to do so. Although he was excluded from the 1978 World Cup-winning squad because it was felt that he was still too young, the next year he led the national under-20 team to a Junior World Cup championship.
Image Source: Google
Maradona moved to Boca Juniors in 1981 and immediately helped them gain the championship. He then moved to Europe, playing with FC Barcelona in 1982 (and winning the Spanish Cup in 1983) and then SSC Napoli (1984–91), where he enjoyed great success, raising the traditionally weak Naples side to the heights of Italian football. With Maradona the team won the league title and cup in 1987 and the league title again in 1990. Maradona’s stint with Napoli came to an end when he was arrested in Argentina for cocaine possession and received a 15-month suspension from playing football. Next he played for Sevilla in Spain and Newell’s Old Boys in Argentina. In 1995 he returned to Boca Juniors and played his last match on October 25, 1997.
Image Source: Google
Maradona’s career with the Argentine national team included World Cup appearances in 1982, 1986, 1990, and 1994. He dominated the 1986 competition in Mexico. In a 2–1 quarterfinal victory over England, he scored two of the most memorable goals in World Cup history. The first was scored with his hand (the referee mistakenly thought the ball had struck his head), a goal now remembered as the “Hand of God” goal. The second occurred after Maradona gained possession of the ball at midfield and dribbled through a pack of English defenders and past the keeper before depositing the ball in the goal. He did not finish the 1994 World Cup, because he tested positive for the drug ephedrine and was again suspended. Maradona also played on South American championship-winning teams in 1987 and 1989.
A stocky and tenacious midfielder, Maradona became a hero of the lower classes of Argentina (from which he hailed) and of southern Italy, where he led Napoli to victories over the wealthier northern clubs. He played 490 official club games during his 21-year professional career, scoring 259 goals; for Argentina he played 91 games and scored 34 goals. An Internet poll conducted by the Fédération Internationale de Football Association named Maradona the top player of the 20th century.
Image Source: Google
In 2008 Maradona was named head coach of the Argentine national team. Shortly after leading Argentina to the quarterfinals of the 2010 World Cup, he and the country’s football governing body could not agree on a contract extension, and his tenure as the team’s head coach ended. In 2011 Maradona was hired to coach the United Arab Emirates club Al Wasl. However, the team struggled, and Maradona was fired the following year. He worked for several other clubs before becoming coach of Mexico’s Dorados de Sinaloa in 2018.
Prodigiously skilled footballer who captained Argentina to victory in the 1986 World Cup.
Image Source: Google
World News/Sports News: Religious faith is a psychological prop for many a footballer, but Diego Maradona, who has died aged 60 after suffering a heart attack, took things further and came to believe in his own divinity. His multiple skills as creator, organiser and striker brought him worldwide acknowledgement as one of the best players ever known, an accolade tempered, in English minds at least, by the goal he scored for Argentina after 51 minutes of their quarter-final against England in the 1986 World Cup finals in Mexico.
Deemed by the referee to have been headed, the ball was actually punched over the line and the foul went unpunished. It was, said its scorer, “a little with the head of Maradona and a little with the hand of God”.
Image Source: Google
Four minutes later Maradona scored what would turn out to be the match-winner, a goal acclaimed as one of the greatest ever scored, a matter of 10.8 seconds, 44 strides and 12 touches, during which he dribbled past five England players, upended the goalkeeper, Peter Shilton, with a feint, and slipped the ball into the net.
“I felt like applauding,” was the rueful comment of the England striker Gary Lineker. With Maradona as captain and scorer of five of their 14 goals, Argentina went on to become world champions, beating West Germany in the final.
Image Source: Google
A diminutive attacking midfielder who played in the No 10 position and who combined great acceleration, unrivalled vision, and a touch and ball control that he ascribed to the abnormal rotational capability of his ankles, Maradona captained Argentina to two World Cup finals, winning one, and gained numerous honours that included South American Footballer of the Year in 1979 and 1980 and the World Cup Golden Ball in 1986 and Fifa Goal of the Century in 2000.
In a career marked by glory, drama, indiscipline and a long-running cocaine habit, he was a controversial figure at Barcelona, worshipped as a god in Napoli, and kicked out of the 1994 World Cup finals in disgrace. He was also exploited commercially by clubs, associates, hangers-on and his national governing body, as well as by Argentina’s military regimes. According to Settimio Aloisio, the vice-president of Argentinos Juniors: “Maradona was a good diversion when things were difficult for the regime. He kept people happy. The Romans used the circus, our military used the football stadiums.”
Maradona was born in Lanús, Buenos Aires, and his childhood home was a shack in Villa Fiorito, a shanty town with a reputation as one of the most dangerous in the city. His father, Diego Sr, a low-paid worker in a bone-meal factory, was from Guaraní Indian stock; his mother, Dalma (nee Franco), known as Tota, was the descendant of poor immigrants from southern Italy.
As her first boy after three daughters, Diego Jr was doted on by Tota and his grandmother Salvadora, who drummed into him their Roman Catholic faith and reminded him of his responsibilities as the eldest son. Put to work early, he sold small items of scrap and discarded tinfoil from cigarette packets, but it was the leather football given to him for his third birthday by his uncle Cirilo that provided his route out of poverty.
Aged eight, Maradona’s prodigious skills brought him a trial with Francisco Cornejo, the trainer of Cebollitas, the youth team of the first division side Argentinos Juniors. Cornejo was left open-mouthed: “He seemed to come from another planet.” He had never seen a young boy display such talent. Given Maradona’s puny physique and strangely large head, at first he thought he was lying about his age and demanded to see his identity card. Reassured, Cornejo took him on and became his mentor at Cebollitas, with whom, in 1974, Maradona won the youth championship in Córdoba. Soon after he had his first contract with Argentinos Juniors, who promoted him to the main team.
Image Source: Google
He made his professional debut in 1976, 10 days before his 16th birthday, scored his first top-flight goal 25 days later and immediately became a teenage sensation. During his five years at the club he contributed 116 goals in as many appearances and was their leading scorer in every full season.
In 1979 he was the key man in Argentina’s victory in the World Youth Championship final against the Soviet Union, and at 20 he moved to Boca Juniors, where his 28 goals in 40 appearances helped the club win the Argentina Primera División Metropolitano in 1982, the same year he appeared in his first World Cup, in Spain. Small wonder that Barcelona promptly paid a world record fee of £5m for him; still only 21, he went to Spain in the face of the whole of Argentina protesting at his departure.
His turbulent two years at Barcelona brought him 38 goals and a 1983 Copa del Rey winner’s medal, as well as financial difficulties, the beginnings of his cocaine use and heavy drinking, a career threatening ankle injury inflicted by Andoni Goikoetxea of Athletic Bilbao, and increasingly frequent disputes with the club president, Josep Lluís Núñez. He was also the instigator of a mass brawl in front of King Juan Carlos of Spain in the 1984 Copa del Rey final after Barcelona lost to Athletic Bilbao. It was his last game for the club.
A £6.9m transfer fee that surpassed his own record took him to Napoli, and brought about a seven-year love affair during which time he inspired them to end the footballing hegemony of northern Italy; in 1987 they became the first southern club to win Serie A. The following season he was Serie A’s leading scorer. In 1989 Napoli won their first European trophy, the Uefa Cup, and a second league title followed in 1990. To the Neapolitans he possessed a godlike status in which he himself was prepared to believe; his image appeared in murals and shrines on city walls. The reality was darker; a cocaine addiction, connections with the Camorra – the Naples mafia – and a son, Diego Sinagra, the result of an extramarital affair, whom he refused for many years to acknowledge.
When he left in 1992, Napoli officially retired the No 10 shirt in recognition of his contribution to the club, even though his record was by then tarnished by a failed drug test for cocaine. By now in a precarious physical and psychological state, after a 15-month ban from football he spent a year playing for Sevilla FC in Spain before returning to Argentina, where first Newell’s Old Boys and then Boca Juniors handed him much needed lifelines.
Maradona’s international career never again hit the peak of Mexico 86. In Italy in 1990, sapped by an ankle injury, he was not the dominant force of four years previously, though he captained Argentina to the final, in which they lost 1-0 to West Germany. Four years later, in the US, he played only two games before testing positive for the proscribed drug ephedrine. Expulsion in disgrace terminated his international career, during which he had appeared 91 times for Argentina, scoring 34 goals.
After his retirement from football in 1997 (having scored 259 goals in 491 league matches for his various club sides), the body that had suffered years of physical abuse became bloated and grossly overweight, and in 2004 he was hospitalised with a suspected heart attack following excessive cocaine use.
Image Source: Google
Two years later he underwent gastric bypass surgery to reverse his obesity and, in 2008, after the resignation of the Argentina head coach, Alfio Basile, he was asked to take his place. Qualification was secured to the 2010 World Cup finals despite a 6-1 defeat, Argentina’s second worst ever, by Bolivia and a two-month Fifa ban given to Maradona for exploding into abusive language at the live post-match press conference. After Argentina were eliminated 4-0 in the quarter-finals by Germany, his contract was not renewed.
In 2011 he became manager of the Dubai club Al Wasl in the United Arab Emirates before being sacked after just over a year in the job. Following a five year interregnum, in 2017 he was appointed head coach of Al-Fujairah in the UAE’s second division, moving the following year to the Mexican club Dorados de Sinaloa and in 2019 back to Argentina, to Gimnasia y Esgrima La Plata.
Despite his many misdemeanours and complicated personality, Maradona remained a hero in Argentina. “He offered to Argentinians a way out of their collective frustration and that’s why people love him,” said his former team-mate Jorge Valdano. “[That’s why he] is a divine figure.”
He married Claudia Villafañe in 1984; they divorced in 2004. He is survived by their two daughters, Dalma and Giannina, and his son, Diego.
Image Source: Google
• Diego Armando Maradona, footballer, born 30 October 1960; died 25 November 2020.
World News/Sports News: Argentina soccer legend Diego Maradona, widely regarded as one of the game’s greatest ever players, died of a heart attack on Wednesday, his lawyer said.
Image Source: Google
Maradona, 60, had recently battled health issues and underwent emergency surgery for a subdural haematoma several weeks ago.
He suffered a heart attack at his home in the outskirts of Buenos Aires on Wednesday, Argentinian media and acquaintances of the former player said.
Maradona won the World Cup with Argentina in 1986.
Argentine President Alberto Fernandez declared three days of national mourning after the news of Maradona’s death.
India on Tuesday blocked 43 Chinese mobile applications from accessing by users in India. This action was taken based on the inputs regarding these apps for engaging in activities which are prejudicial to sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India, security of state and public order.
Image Source: Google
India News: India on Tuesday blocked 43 Chinese mobile applications from accessing by users in India. This action was taken based on the inputs regarding these apps for engaging in activities which are prejudicial to sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India, security of state and public order.
Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has issued the order for blocking the access of these apps by users in India based on the comprehensive reports received from Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Center, Ministry of Home Affairs.
This comes even as apps which were blocked in the first round are waiting for a clarification from the government on their future course of action after they submitted detailed responses to government questionnaires. The government had banned apps such as ByteDance-owned TikTok and Helo along with WeChat, CamScanner and PUBG in multiple rounds so far.
Earlier on 28 June, 2020 the Centre had blocked access to 59 Chinese mobile apps and on 2nd September, 2020 118 more apps were banned under section 69A of the Information Technology Act. Government is committed to protect the interests of citizens and sovereignty and integrity of India on all fronts and it shall take all possible steps to ensure that.
Here is the full list of apps:
AliSuppliers Mobile App
Alibaba Workbench
AliExpress - Smarter Shopping, Better Living
Alipay Cashier
Lalamove India - Delivery App
Drive with Lalamove India
Snack Video
CamCard - Business Card Reader
CamCard - BCR (Western)
Soul- Follow the soul to find you
Chinese Social - Free Online Dating Video App & Chat
Date in Asia - Dating & Chat For Asian Singles
WeDate-Dating App
Free dating app-Singol, start your date!
Adore App
TrulyChinese - Chinese Dating App
TrulyAsian - Asian Dating App
ChinaLove: dating app for Chinese singles
DateMyAge: Chat, Meet, Date Mature Singles Online
AsianDate: find Asian singles
FlirtWish: chat with singles
Guys Only Dating: Gay Chat
Tubit: Live Streams
WeWorkChina
First Love Live- super hot live beauties live online
World News/ Covid-19 : On the doorstep of a terraced house in northern England, virus hunter Colin Hutchinson came face-to-face with the new wave of COVID-19, and the obstacles to slowing its spread.
A retired surgeon, Hutchinson is part of a local team of “contact tracers” in Halifax, Yorkshire, that aims to reach infected people before they infect others. His experience that day in mid-October, he said, summed up why Britain’s “tracking of the virus is very, very poor.”
He wanted to speak urgently to a 54-year-old woman who’d tested positive for COVID-19, to identify her contacts. The area’s two hospitals were filling up – 40 COVID-19 patients were already being treated – and deaths from the virus had tripled in the district in the previous two weeks.
A gaunt woman appeared at the door, coughing. She apologised for not answering her phone, then gave Hutchinson the details of six others who were ill. Then came the bureaucracy. The six, all a few feet away inside the house, must be told to isolate. But, under the rules of England’s Test and Trace system, Hutchinson wasn’t allowed to speak to them. Instead, he had to go home and enter their names into a database so a call centre could contact them individually.
“The whole process could have been wrapped up there in one go,” said Hutchinson, a local councillor for the opposition Labour Party.
The government says the rules are designed to ensure patient confidentiality. For many health experts, such incidents exemplify a systemic failure to control COVID-19.
Among the world’s wealthiest nations, Britain had the second-highest death toll from the coronavirus in the first wave of the pandemic, behind the United States. Adjusted for population, Britain’s toll was the third highest.
After enduring a three-month lockdown in the spring, Britons hoped that Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government would put in place a new strategy to protect the nation through the winter. But with infections again spreading and deaths reaching over 350 per day, England entered another lockdown on Nov. 5.
The country is one of many struggling to cope with a new surge of the disease. With more than 12,000 additional deaths by Nov. 19 in the second wave, Britain is recording nearly four times more deaths per capita than Germany, though not as many as Spain or France. Few countries have got things completely right.
Johnson, who contracted the coronavirus himself, was blamed by many scientists for acting too slowly to stop the initial spread in the spring. As Reuters reported earlier this year, behind this tragedy lay a failure to spot the infection as it arrived, to stamp it out with an early lockdown and to implement effective tracing and isolation of cases, as pioneered in Asia and used to effect in Germany.
Stung by such criticism, Johnson offered hope. Even if cases rose again, he said confidently on June 3, the country would be able to “replace national lockdowns with individual isolation and, if necessary, local action where there are outbreaks.” A month later, he told lawmakers a system now in place to test and trace COVID-19 cases was “as good as, or better than, any other system anywhere in the world” and would play “a vital part in ensuring that we do not have a second spike this winter.”
Now, an investigation by Reuters has exposed how lessons from the first wave were not learned, and why Britain once again was forced into a drastic lockdown. New measures were put in place – a rapid increase in testing capacity, for example. But the government’s failure to share full data on the disease’s spread with local authorities and the public gave a false impression of success. This concealed what one health expert called an “iceberg” of infection and led to a relaxation of social restrictions too soon in some places.
And while tests and contact tracing expanded, they did so in such an inefficient way that they couldn’t keep pace with the spread of the virus. A Reuters analysis reveals that England has managed to trace just one non-household contact – someone who doesn’t live with the infected person – for every two identified cases of COVID-19. That compares to over 20 contacts for each single case in Singapore and Taiwan, according to studies.
The reason for this dysfunction, Reuters reporting shows, lies in a disjointed design and a government preference, contrary to some expert advice, for national solutions over targeted, local responses.
“This is not the system that I would design from what I understand about it now,” said David Heymann, a world authority on contact tracing and the first chairman of Public Health England, the government agency charged with leading the response to pandemics. A system to tackle the pandemic needs to be locally centred, said Heymann. “Face-to face trust is what’s important...You can’t do contact tracing from a central location to be effective.”
A spokesman for the Department of Health and Social Care, Britain’s health ministry, denied that the government’s response to COVID-19 was failing. Since the start of the pandemic, the spokesman said, “we have worked rapidly to build the biggest testing system per head of population of all the major countries in Europe.” The tracing system was helping to stop the spread of the virus and had asked more than two million people to self-isolate, the spokesman added.
A LOST OPPORTUNITY
At the start of the summer, as the first wave of COVID-19 retreated, scientists told the government what was now required: a system to suppress any new outbreaks quickly. At its centre, scientists said, should be contact tracing: detective work to locate outbreaks and find and quarantine any potential new cases.
Asia-Pacific countries such as China, South Korea, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand had shown how rapid, local and intrusive steps can be effective in extinguishing outbreaks. But such work is intensive. It needs to happen at lightning speed and people need to isolate when told to do so.
The government’s scientific advisory committee, SAGE, backed by multiple research reports, told Johnson in May that after a person got sick with COVID-19, an effective system requires 80% of their contacts to be reached and told to isolate within three days.
That is difficult, and the scientists emphasised the need for other measures as well. Graham Medley, a member of SAGE, told Reuters contact tracing can never replace measures such as social distancing. Both are necessary.
Johnson was under political pressure from within his own party to ease restrictions that were damaging the economy and limiting people’s freedoms. By May 20, he announced the creation of a “world-beating” contact-tracing service to reopen the country.
A business executive and Conservative Party member of the House of Lords, Dido Harding, took charge of the new system. It aspired to what she called on June 11 the “gold standard” of “isolating all contacts within 48 hours of someone requesting a test.” Scientists made clear that anything less would be ineffective in stopping the spread of the virus.
A Reuters study of official data shows that, as things turned out, Harding’s system fell far short of this target. At best, about half of all contacts of people sick with COVID-19 are told to self-isolate. And it takes tracers an average of six or seven days from when someone gets sick to reach those contacts. Reuters also found that many people withhold the names of their contacts, and there is usually no detailed follow-up investigation.
Some scientists said the problem was that the government made a system of ill-fitting parts. There was a testing system, a separate national tracing service and a smartphone app for digital contact tracing.
“It’s like we’ve got three-quarters of a dam,” said David Bonsall, a clinical scientist at Oxford who has advised the government on its smartphone app. “I’m very proud of what we’ve built, but three-quarters of a dam is as good as no dam at all.”
The system’s gaps are deadly. “What you’ve got are giant holes representing parts of Track and Trace that are too slow to stop a wave of infections. And it’s like natural selection – the virus just works its way through those holes,” Bonsall said.
Eleanor Roaf, a public health director in Trafford, which covers part of the Greater Manchester region, said delivering a good test-and-trace system on time had been one of the “lost opportunities in lockdown.”
A health ministry spokesman said the government had always said that test and trace was “not a silver bullet.”
LAYERS UPON LAYERS
As they looked around for an institution to run a contact-tracing system, Johnson and Harding did have one available: the country’s National Health Service (NHS) which provides free healthcare to all.
In normal times, medical tests are carried out by general practitioners or in NHS hospitals; analysis is done in NHS labs or labs belonging to government agency Public Health England. NHS doctors and nurses who handle infectious disease have experience in contact tracing, as do local and regional health teams.
But instead, the government created a 12 billion pound ($16 billion) Test and Trace system that is largely privately operated. Three firms – Randox Laboratories, Serco Group Plc and Sitel Group – got among the biggest contracts, more than 725 million pounds between them, much of it without other companies being invited to bid. Private companies would handle the bulk of COVID-19 tests and, separately, contact tracing.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock explained at the time that Britain was turning to commercial and academic partners to “build from scratch.” On April 2, John Newton, the official then leading the testing program, announced the creation of a “separate workstream entirely independent of the NHS.”
While it’s unclear how an NHS-run system would have coped with building up testing and tracing, the chosen design went against the advice of some scientists and public health experts. Local directors of public health, who are employed by local authorities, had been lobbying the government to be involved. On May 18, the Association of Public Health Directors complained about “the limited extent that the government has involved local government in all aspects of the test, track and trace programme.”
The first part of the new service was testing. Hancock laid out its importance on May 21, saying, “As we follow our plan, our testing regime will be our guiding star. It’s the information that helps us to search out and defeat the virus.”
The government outsourced the organisation of non-hospital tests, referred to as community tests, to consultancy firm Deloitte. It created an online booking service and a network of drive-through testing centers. A chain of privately-run laboratories, known as Lighthouse Labs, was established to analyse the samples. These labs were operated by various firms and academic institutions, and overseen by the Department of Health, the health ministry.
In a statement to Reuters, the ministry denied bypassing the NHS. A spokesman said existing NHS labs had greatly expanded operations but new mass capacity was required.
The contact-tracing part of the new Test and Trace service was launched at the end of May. Serco and Sitel recruited thousands of “tracers” whose job it is to call people and tell them to isolate.
And there was one more element. The government announced in April what officials called a game changer – a smartphone app that would do some of the work of human contact tracers. But the original app was scrapped in June before its launch because of technical problems. Months were spent developing a new one, which was finally released in September.
Between all these components of Test and Trace is a series of computer systems through which the details of people with COVID-19 and their contacts are passed. Reuters found that to get a non-hospital test result, details of a patient’s case flow through at least four different databases. To reach a contact tracer, the case flows through at least five.
This complexity created delays. Mat Barrow is the managing director of a private Leeds-based company, X-Lab, that runs a national exchange that processes test results. Barrow told Reuters that sending results directly to local authorities rather than through the various databases would shorten the current process by “about a day.” Experts say this could make a critical difference in blocking the disease’s spread.
The data transfer led to glitches. In September, nearly 16,000 positive case records were lost from the system for several days – causing a delay in contact tracing. The government blamed a “legacy” file system that cut off records after about 65,000 rows of data. Hancock, the health minister, said the incident “should never have happened.”
Jon Crowcroft, professor of communications systems at the University of Cambridge, said the more databases used, the greater the chance of things going wrong, and centralising data can lead to errors and delays. There are cloud-based platforms that can handle much bigger datasets more quickly and reliably, Crowcroft said. “The data in this case is not complex. I’m mystified why they’d not start from something slightly more up-to-date.”
The government disputes that it created a disjointed system. The health ministry spokesman told Reuters – without providing evidence – that the test-and-trace service was “breaking chains of transmission” thanks to cooperation between local and national teams in “the largest diagnostic network in British history.”
A HIDDEN ICEBERG
In the first wave of the pandemic, Britain’s testing capacity was well below what was needed. As Reuters has previously reported, at first more than 99 in every 100 cases went undetected. Heading into the summer, Johnson hoped the new Lighthouse Labs would make a difference. He set a target of 500,000 tests per day capacity by the end of October, up from 25,000 in mid-April.
Even as testing was increasing, many local authorities were struggling to get access to the results of the community tests, leaving them in the dark about how many cases there were in their area. This was because, until the end of June, there wasn’t a system to transfer results from the Lighthouse Labs to local health officials.
When the information was finally shared, it revealed what Roaf, the Trafford public health director, said was an “iceberg” of hidden infections in northwest England, particularly in less affluent areas. In Greater Manchester, for instance, when the Lighthouse Lab data for June was added to the previously available figures, it pushed up the number of cases to nearly 2,500 from 703.
In the town of Oldham in Greater Manchester, results from hospital tests had suggested the number of cases was falling in June. When the community testing data became available, a more worrying picture emerged, said Arooj Shah, deputy leader of Oldham Council. The infection rate had not budged at all and remained “significantly higher” than England’s overall average. The new adjusted figures for Oldham showed 391 cases, a five-fold increase.
Many officials in the North believe that, if they’d had full access to the data, they would have argued against easing social restrictions from July. “The lockdown probably finished about the right time in London, but that was too soon for us,” said Roaf. “The view in the North West is that we didn’t push it down low enough before everything unlocked.”
There was a harsh human cost. While Johnson permitted holiday travel from July and launched a discount scheme to revive pubs and restaurants, many elderly and other vulnerable people were kept in isolation through the summer months. As case numbers rose again, hopes of family reunions slipped away.
Before the pandemic, Marie Meehan used to visit her 91-year-old mother, Peggy Curley, twice a day in her Liverpool nursing home, stopping in before and after work.
When Britain entered its first lockdown in the spring, Meehan and other families would gather at the windows to see their parents. “My mum would actually walk the length of the room to wave back at me. She was expecting me,” Meehan said.
There were video chats, and one brief visit in an outdoor gazebo. But, as COVID-19 cases started rising again, Meehan despaired. She joined tens of thousands of people in signing a petition from a grassroots group called Rights for Residents that pleaded with the government to ease restrictions on nursing home visits. Hancock, the health minister, has said he hopes to allow family visits to care homes in England by Christmas.
FAILING THE TEST
After spreading in the North, cases grew steadily across the country – compounded by the reopening of schools at the start of September. COVID-19 was back. Johnson and his ministers had long predicted a second wave in the winter. But not this soon.
And Britain still lacked the infrastructure to deal with it. Testing couldn’t keep pace. The new Lighthouse Labs built up capacity quickly to the end of June, but in July growth slowed and then total capacity began to fall. By Aug. 30, overall testing capacity across all labs stood below the July 9 level.
The reason was a shortage of staff, four laboratory workers told Reuters. The Lighthouse Labs had drawn in temporary staff from universities when they first launched, but as summer ended many of these people returned to their regular jobs. A supervisor at a lab in Milton Keynes, in southern England, said his shift team fell from about 50 in June to below 40 on some days in late summer.
The spokesman for the health ministry, which oversees the Lighthouse network, said the labs had “successfully transitioned” from using highly skilled volunteers to more permanent staff.
By September, demand for tests outstripped the Lighthouse Labs’ capacity, creating a backlog. Thousands of tests were sent abroad for processing and access to tests was delayed.
Back in the first wave, the government’s scientific advisory committee, SAGE, had blamed a “lag in data provision for modelling” for the failure to track the pandemic’s swift spread in Britain. Over the summer, the lag in recording cases didn’t improve.
A Reuters analysis found that it typically took two days to get tested after developing symptoms and a further three days for the result of that test to make it to local officials and contact tracers. That made it impossible to hit the government’s target of isolating all contacts of an infected person within 48 hours of symptoms appearing.
Many results took far longer – about 91,000 took four days, and nearly 70,000 took five days or more.
THE TRACERS
The contact-tracing system, too, has been beset by problems.
Polly Gould, who runs a travel agency on the Isle of Wight, said her family was bombarded with more than 60 phone calls, emails and text messages in October after her two daughters tested positive.
The Gould sisters, who’d come home to celebrate their mother’s birthday, each received a 20-minute call from a contact tracer to ask who they live with and where they had been recently. They were told to self-isolate. Each family member the sisters named as a contact then received a call seeking the same information. That in turn triggered another round of calls to the family, and another.
“It has absolutely driven me mad,” said Gould.
While Gould’s family was deluged with calls, Tim Daily, a 57-year-old financial adviser in Milton Keynes, got none. On Sept. 23, three days after being tested, Daily woke to a text message and email telling him he was positive and should self-isolate for 10 days. “Straight away I was thinking, ‘I should be getting a call from Test and Trace at any time,’” said Daily, who regularly meets four or five clients a day. When the call didn’t arrive, Daily contacted his clients himself. He told Reuters that no contact tracer has ever called him.
The contact-tracing system involves a network of newly recruited staff, most of them working from home. About 3,000 of these are doctors and nurses, often retired. Their job is to call people who’ve tested positive and make a list of recent contacts.
A second group then takes over to call the contacts. Serco and Sitel employ about 12,000 people to do this.
Reuters interviewed seven current and former tracers. Several explained how frustrating they found an automated system that dictates who they call and insists they work from a script. The system requires different members of the same household to be called separately, often on the same number.
Hancock said on Nov. 23 that members of the same household would no longer be called individually by contact tracers.
Most of the time, the contact tracers said they had little to do - even when COVID-19 cases were rising.
Two tracers, both retired doctors, said they didn’t make any calls. One explained how he struggled to log on to the various systems, about six of them, each requiring a username and password. Another said there was a month-long delay in sending him his login details.
A student, working for Sitel from home, told Reuters she had so much free time that she had sewn up all her housemates’ moth-eaten clothes and learned to knit. Another student, working for Serco, said he makes about six calls a day from his bedroom in a shared flat. Some days he doesn’t speak to anyone because the contacts don’t answer the phone. He said many people don’t answer because the tracers call from an unrecognised number, which looks like it’s coming from a marketing company.
Each tracer has on average reached less than one contact per day since the end of May, including household members, according to a Reuters analysis of official data.
A spokesperson for Serco said stories about call handlers with little to do were “an out-of-date depiction” and the service is now a lot busier. “Our operational delivery has been outstanding,” the spokesperson said.
Sitel referred questions about the system’s performance to the health ministry, which oversees and manages it.
The ministry spokesman stressed that contact tracers were reaching “the vast majority of people testing positive and their contacts.” He pointed to data published Oct. 2 showing that in the most recent week the service reached 71.3% of people who tested positive and 83.7% of contacts, where their details were provided.
A Reuters analysis of official data found such figures don’t tell the full story. Only two thirds of people who test positive are reached and willing to provide details of their contacts, the data show. So, on average, no more than 54% of contacts are traced. This figure includes people in the same household, who should be isolating anyway, under government rules. In summary, Reuters found that only half of a non-household contact – someone not living with the infected person – was tracked down in each of the 604,000 COVID-19 cases handled by national tracers since May 28.
Local officials described being sent lists of infected people who claimed to have been in touch with no one. There was no contact information for nearly one in four contacts in the week to Nov. 4, official data show. That compares with 31 contacts per case in Singapore and 27 in Taiwan, according to studies of their methods.
The system is not only inefficient, it’s also slow, according to tracers and Reuters’ data analysis. This analysis shows that from the onset of symptoms, it typically takes seven days in England to reach an infected person’s contacts.
“If you are taking that long, you really have to ask, what is the point?” said Martin McKee, a professor of public health at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.
In contrast, Singapore’s health ministry said in September it had cut the average time taken to identify and quarantine close contacts to under two days.
The system continues to creak. In the week to Nov. 11, the latest available data, only six out of 10 of the total number of contacts identified by people who tested positive, including household contacts, were reached and asked to self-isolate. The number has barely changed since June.
Many epidemiologists told the government from the beginning that a very different approach was necessary to have any hope of preventing a second wave – to build a system to trace the disease at the grassroots level.
In May, Britain’s leading scientific body, the Royal Society, had stressed the need for “local integration of systems.”
The government was slow to take up that message. With few extra resources, local authorities could create only small teams of contact tracers. These local teams only take on cases that the national team has already failed to deal with – leading to more delay. A report by one London authority found the average time between a positive test and the case reaching local teams was 5.7 days.
The health ministry spokesman said testing and tracing “has always been a collaboration” with local authorities.
As the pandemic worsened, cases in Liverpool skyrocketed. Restrictions at the city’s nursing homes became ever tighter, including at the residence where Meehan’s mother, Peggy Curley, lived.
Dreaded news reached Meehan in October. Several of the residents had tested positive for COVID-19. Soon afterwards, her mother developed a fever and a slight cough. She, too, tested positive.
As her 91-year-old mother’s health declined, Meehan finally was allowed to visit. “No one wants to get ‘the call’ to go in and see our loved ones when it is obviously too late, when all we wanted was to spend any quality time whilst they were well enough to see us,” Meehan said.
On Nov. 9, two weeks after testing positive for COVID-19, Meehan’s mother died.
World News: China must drop its illusion that its relations with the US will automatically improve under President-elect Joe Biden's administration, a Chinese government advisor has said, adding that Beijing should be prepared for a tough stance from Washington.
Image Source: Google
Zheng Yongnian, the Dean of the Advanced Institute of global and Contemporary China Studies, a Shenzhen-based think tank, has said that the Chinese government should utilise every opportunity to fix ties with the US, South China Morning Post has reported.
"The good old days are over... the cold war hawks in the US have been in a highly mobilised state for several years, and they will not disappear overnight," Zheng said in an interview on the sidelines of the Understanding China Conference in Guangzhou recently.
Zheng, who attended a symposium hosted by President Xi Jinping in August to offer advice on China's long-term strategy, said there was now a bipartisan consensus within the US on containing China.
Zheng said President-elect Joe Biden might make the most of the public resentment towards China after he entered the White House. "American society is torn apart. i don't think Biden can do anything about it," Zheng said.
"He is certainly a very weak President, if he can't sort out domestic issues, then he will do something on the diplomatic front, do something against China. If we say Trump is not interested in promoting democracy and freedom, Biden is. (President Donald) Trump is not interested in war... but a Democratic President could start wars."
The relationship between China and therefore the us have deteriorated under President Trump over a range of reasons, including the Covid-19 handling, trade and human rights.
Over 300 separate Bills targeting China are involved by both Democrats and Republicans within the Congress, and therefore the important ones addressing the catastrophes in Hong Kong and Xinjiang enjoyed full bipartisan support. the foremost potentially effective law, the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, which Trump only reluctantly signed, was co-sponsored by Republican Marco Rubio and Kamala Harris, the Democrats' Vice-President-elect.
Chinese foreign policy specialists have said they expect tensions between the US and China to continue under the Biden presidency.
At times during the election campaign, Biden took a tough line on China, calling Xi a "thug".
His campaign also signalled that he will call out China on its repressive policies within the far western region of Xinjiang.
Wang said China remained resolute in protecting its sovereignty and hoped the next US administration would "meet China halfway".
Image Source: Google World News/Covid-19 Vaccine traker:The united states hopes to start a sweeping program of Covid vaccinations in early December, the head of the govt coronavirus vaccine effort said Sunday.
"Our plan is to be able to ship vaccines to the immunization sites within 24 hours of approval" by the US Food and Drug Administration, Moncef Slaoui told CNN.
"So I expect maybe on Day Two of the approval, on the 11th or the 12th of December."
FDA vaccine advisors reportedly will meet december 8 to 10 to discuss approving vaccines which Pfizer and Moderna say are a minimum of 95 percent effective.
Two leading vaccine candidates -- one by Pfizer and German partner BioNTech and another by US firm Moderna -- have shown to be 95 percent effective and Pfizer already applied to emergency use approval from US health authorities.
Meanwhile, Pfizer Inc applied to US health regulators on Friday for emergency use authorization (EUA) of its COVID-19 vaccine, the first such application during a major step toward providing protection against the new coronavirus.
The application to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) comes just days after Pfizer and German partner BioNTech SE reported final trial results that showed the vaccine was 95% effective in preventing COVID-19 with no major safety concerns.
Pfizer Chief executive officer Albert Bourla confirmed the application had been made in a video posted on the company's website on Friday afternoon.
The FDA said on Friday it might hold a meeting of the advisory committee on December 10 at which members would discuss the vaccine.
Slaoui estimated that 20 million people across the US may be vaccinated in December, with 30 million per month after that.
US drug regulators on Saturday already gave emergency approval to a Covid-19 antibody therapy -- one used by US President Donald Trump -- and G20 nations were pushing for global "equitable" access to vaccines with worries poorer nations will be left behind.
The US, which recorded 177,552 new infections on Saturday, is now averaging almost 110,000 more daily cases than a month ago. Recently, US FDA approved an antibody cocktail from Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. for coronavirus treatment.
Bollywood News:Actor Tiger Shroff (Tiger Shorff) sister Krishna Shroff ( Krishna Shroff ) these days are a lot of headlines. Discussions about Krishna Shroff intensified since the news of his breakup was revealed. Krishna Shroff has been dating Australian man Eban Hyams for a long time. Recently, the couple also celebrated the first anniversary of their affair. Despite their unending love, this relationship did not last long and the two have separated from each other. Krishna Shroff himself revealed this information from his social media account when he appealed to the fan club not to tag the two together. Meanwhile, Krishna Shroff made it clear that both of them are no longer together and their breakup has been done.
After the breakup, Krishna Shroff is making headlines for her bold and hot Instagram photos. Recently, the actress shared a hot video on social media in a red bikini. On which Krishna Shroff's brother Tiger Shroff and Disha Patni also commented and praised him. Now the latest pictures of Krishna Shroff are also becoming viral like fire on social media.
In this shared picture, Krishna Shroff is seen flaunting her hot figure and toned muscles. People are commenting a lot on this black and white picture of Krishna Shroff.
Krishna Shroff is trying to recover from the breakup,
let us know that since the news of the breakup, Krishna Shroff has been continuously sharing her bold pictures. Sharing the latest picture, she gave the caption, 'You don't already know that this is for a comeback'. It is clear that Krishna Shroff is trying to recover from her breakup.
Although Krishna Shroff herself has not given the reason for their breakup, but through the installation of Ebon Hyams, there has been a hint that the reason for the breakup of both was long distance relationship. Ebon Hyams lives in Australia with his parents, while Krishna Shroff settles in Mumbai.
