Articles by News Desk

The school education department has announced that September 1 could be the tentative date when schools reopen across Tamil Nadu. Following this, the Department of Public Health has issued a set of detailed Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for school reopening, covering the various precautions and safety measures to be taken by school to prevent spread of COVID-19. General guidelines for school reopening SoPs along with IEC materials to be shared to school management.Sanitizers/soap with water to be made available by the concerned authorities .Schools (Government,Government aided and Private) have to open the campuses in phases, with such activities where they can easily adhere to social…

Vaccinated Mumbaikars allowed to board local trains Around 35 lakh vaccinated Mumbaikars breathed a sigh of relief on August 16 as they finally boarded local trains. Although a power outage caused the harbour line to cease operations on August 18, the line has now resumed. Commuters living in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) especially rushed to stations in Mira Road, Dombivali, Vasai and other MMR locales. However, citizens are required to now purchase monthly passes if they wish to ride Mumbai's trains. This move has angered railway passenger associations as they say that non-regular travelers who have been vaccinated may…

OMR-ECR link work begins In a bid to reduce bottlenecks along the key roads, the state highways department has begun construction work to connect Old Mahabalipuram Road (OMR) and East Coast Road (ECR) at Thoraipakkam junction. The construction work, estimated to cost Rs 204 crore, will connect Neelankarai directly with Thoraipakkam. The work will be carried out in two phases.The first phase, a 760 m stretch from Thoraipakkam to Buckingham Canal is underway. The road from the other side of the canal and a bridge will be constructed in the second phase. At present, OMR users use Lattice Bridge (LB)…

Revised guidelines Markets and commercial centres face some restrictions as the festival season kicked off with Varamahalakshmi and Muharram on August 20th. Shops, restaurants and mall owners have to ensure that their employees are vaccinated at least once and customers wear masks and maintain social distancing. Shop owners failing to enforce these rules face a fine or closure of their establishments. The Chief Commissioner has said 50 teams of marshals, home guards and police will patrol the city to enforece COVID appropriate behaviour rules based and punish people violating COVID norms. Travellers from Kerala or Maharashtra are required to show…

12 Indian coastal cities will be submerged by the end of the century: IPCC A report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has predicted that 12 Indian coastal cities, Kandla, Okha, Bhavnagar, Mumbai, Mormugao, Mangalore, Cochin, Paradip, Khidirpur, Visakhapatnam, Chennai, and Tuticorin, could be under almost three feet of water by the end of this century. Asia has been highlighted as a major factor driving such calamitous change. The report notes that sea levels around Asia have been increasing at a faster rate than the average global rate. Moreover, the report says that by 2050 extreme sea-level events…

E-Pass facility launched for Mumbai's trains Maharashtra government launched an online e-pass facility on August 12 to enable fully vaccinated people to travel in suburban trains in Mumbai from Independence Day onwards. Officials said that the state's Relief and Rehabilitation Department had developed a web link to provide e-passes to employees and essential workers. Representative Image The same link will now make e-passes available to fully vaccinated citizens who have completed 14 days after their second dose, for Mumbai suburban railway travel. The digital process will not be a replacement for the offline ticketing system which will continue to be…

Bengaluru children test COVID positive The first 10 days of August saw 499 children in Bengaluru testing positive for COVID. A health bulletin reported that 88 children between 0 to 9 years and 305 children between 10 to 19 years tested positive. The number might shoot up to more than three times in the next few weeks, said sources in the health department. They have also advised parents to vaccinate themselves and to keep children away from crowded places. However, BBMP officials denied there was a steep rise in fresh cases among children. They said most children who tested positive…

Two new COVID clusters identified in Chennai Two new clusters recording over 20 COVID cases have been identified in Chennai. On August 2nd, a religious gathering near Kilpauk turned out to be the first cluster that led to around 20 infections out of 275 samples.  An apartment complex in Sholinganallur has emerged as the second major cluster where 23 out of 398 samples tested positive. It was identified that the security personnel at the apartment were unvaccinated. A patient being admitted at the Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital. Pic: Laasya Shekhar According to the civic body, there were three index…

India administers more than 50 cr doses of COVID-19 vaccine On August 6th, 203 days after the vaccination drive was launched on January 15th, India administered a total of over 50 cr doses of vaccine. The Union health ministry further informed that 172 million people in the18-44 have received the first dose. Five states, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh, have administered ovr 10 million jabs so far. As of now, India has approved four vaccines---Covishield, Covaxin, Sputnik and Moderna’s vaccine.   Source: Hindustan Times Read more: COVID vaccination for children: What experts are saying No action against…

78.2% seropositivity rate in Chennai The fourth round of serosurveys revealed that the city has an overall seroprevalence rate of 78.2%. Conducted by the Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC), the Indian Council of Medical Research’s National Institute of Epidemiology (NIE) and the National Institute for Research in Tuberculosis (NIRT), 7000 samples were collected from 204 streets in 51 wards spread across all zones.  The results showed that Tondiarpet had the highest seroprevalence of 83.3% and Madhavaram the lowest of 72.5% of the 15 zones in Chennai. Corporation Commissioner Gagandeep Singh Bedi stated that vaccination coverage would be increased in zones like…