Indian Government’s Latest Moves - COVID-19

Part of: GS Prelims and GS-III- S&T

• Combination of Hydroxychloroquine and Azithromycin against COVID-19 instead of HIV drugs
  • According to the new clinical management guidelines issued on 31^st March, 2020, a combination of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) - used for treatment of auto-immune disorders, and azithromycin - the antibiotic has been recommended for use in severe patients.
  • The earlier guidelines, dated 17^th March, 2020, which included use of Anti HIV drugs - Ritonavir and Lopinavir in high risk patients, now stand repealed.
  • Reasons:
    • No specific antivirals have been proven to be effective as per currently available data.
    • The azithromycin-hydroxychloroquine combination is part of an upcoming multi-country trial anchored by the World Health Organization to examine the efficacy of various drug combinations against COVID-19.
    • India has announced its decision to be part of the WHO global trials, which are also looking at these two drugs.
• Portal for Stranded Foreigners in India
  • The Ministry of Tourism has come up with a portal titled ‘Stranded in India’ to disseminate information regarding the services that can be availed by foreign tourists who are stuck far away from their home land.
  • The Portal has information on the Ministry of External Affairs control centres and state-based/regional tourism support infrastructure. It also lists the COVID-19 helpline numbers for tourists.
  • On 19^th March, 2020, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DCGA) had issued an advisory stating that no international commercial passenger flights will operate here from March 23 to March 29. The advisory was later extended and all international flight operations remain suspended till April 14.
    • The government has announced visa extensions for stranded foreigners till flight operations resume.

IITs Support to the Indian Government

• The Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) has offered a range of inexpensive solutions developed by their faculty to assist the government in the fight against the COVID-19 outbreak.
• From low-cost ventilators and testing kits to personal protective equipment for health workers, the directors of IIT-Delhi, IIT-Guwahati, IIT-Bombay and IIT-Kanpur shared their institute’s work on containing the spread of the virus with the Government.
• The institutions have also sought the government’s assistance in facilitating tie-up with Public Sector Units (PSUs) to scale up production of prototypes and to mitigate difficulties faced in procuring raw material because of the lockdown.
• Example: IIT-Guwahati has offered to pitch in with its 3D-printed full-face shield and headgear for health workers, robotic cart to deliver food to isolation wards and high-grade sanitiser. It needs the government’s help to tie up with a PSU for large-scale manufacturing.
• Indian Institutes of Technology are apex institutions for engineering education and research. At present, there are twenty three Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs).

All are governed by the Institutes of Technology Act, 1961 which has declared them as "Institutions of national importance", and lays down their powers, duties, framework for governance etc.

Covid-19 and the Orphan Drug Act – Rare diseases

Part of: GS Prelims and GS-III- S&T

• Recently, the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared the Covid-19 outbreak a pandemic. However, the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) declared Covid-19 an orphan disease, or a rare disease.

Key Points

• The FDA granted Gilead Sciences orphan drug status for its antiviral drug, Remdesivir, on March 23, 2020.
  • Originally developed to treat Ebola, the drug is now being tested for treating COVID-19. Clinical trials are already in Phase III.
• But on March 25 Gilead announced that it had submitted a request to the FDA to remove its orphan drug designation for Remdesivir.
  • Earlier, Gilead had sought the orphan status to the Remdesivir drug to expedite approval of the drug. However, advocates for global access to medicines, rejected the company’s argument.
  • Gilead’s exorbitant pricing of its drug to treat hepatitis C and its drug to treat HIV also attracted attention in the past.
• In recent years, drug companies have been accused of exploiting the law to reap profits, in sales.

Orphan Drug Act, 1983

• Rare diseases became known as orphan diseases because drug companies were not interested in adopting them to develop treatments.
• In the U.S., under the Orphan Drug Act, companies are provided incentives to develop therapies, or orphan drugs, for rare diseases.
• The Act allows seven years of market exclusivity and financial incentives to innovators of these drugs. As a result, orphan drugs are often exorbitantly priced.
• Privileges under the Act may be conferred to companies for drugs to treat a disease that affect less than 200,000 people in the U.S., or for a disease that affects more than 200,000 people but for which there is no hope of recovering R & D costs.
  • The idea is that without these incentives, companies would find it difficult to recover their R&D costs given the small number of people suffering from the rare disease.

Issues

• Covid-19 not a Rare Disease: The Orphan Drug Act applies to a potential drug for COVID-19, which is anything but a rare disease, with 800,049 confirmed cases across the world.
• Paradox: The U.S. FDA conferred the status of an orphan drug on Remdesivir proposed to treat COVID-19 a pandemic.

Impact

• Had Gilead not sought that orphan drug status be rescinded, generic manufacturers would not have been able to market a drug to treat COVID-19 with the same active ingredient till the seven-year period of market exclusivity had ended.
• This would have given Gilead free rein on pricing and licensing which would have had disastrous consequences on the healthcare system.
• However, orphan drug status of Remdesivir would have no impact on India as Gilead Sciences holds patents in India and patents are open to challenge.
• As far as its patent rights are concerned, Indian law permits the government to issue a compulsory licence in certain circumstances of a public health crisis under Section 92 of the Patents Act.
  • This would allow third parties to manufacture a patented drug without permission of the patent holder.

Rare Diseases

• A rare disease is a health condition of low prevalence that affects a small number of people compared with other prevalent diseases in the general population.
  • There is no universally accepted definition of rare diseases and the definitions usually vary across different countries.
• Though rare diseases are of low prevalence and individually rare, collectively they affect a considerable proportion of the population.
• 80% of rare diseases are genetic in origin and hence disproportionately impact children.
• In India there are 56-72 million people affected by rare diseases.
• There is also a demand for the reformulation of National Policy for Treatment of Rare Diseases, 2017.

Jai Hind Jai Bharat

COVID-19 and Globalisation

Part of: GS Prelims and GS-III- Economy

What is Globalisation?

The meaning of Globalisation is usually interpreted to indicate the integration of the economy of the nation with the world economy, it is a multifaceted aspect. It is a result of the collection of multiple strategies that are directed at transforming the world towards greater interdependence and integration. It includes the creation of networks and pursuits transforming social, economic and geographical barriers. Globalisation tries to build links in such a way that the events in India can be determined by events happening distances away.

To put it in other words, Globalisation is the method of interaction and union among people, corporations and governments universally.

Effect of Globalisation in India

India is one of the countries that succeeded significantly after the initiation and implementation of Globalisation. The growth of foreign investment in the field of corporate, retail, and the scientific sector is enormous in the country. It also had a tremendous impact on the social, monetary, cultural, and political area. In recent year, Globalisation has increased due to improvements in transportation and information technology. With the improved global synergies comes the growth of global trade, doctrines and culture.

Covid-19 and Globalisation

Global leaders have reached this consensus that the pandemic Covid-19 and the crisis it has generated is a turning point in modern history.

• The crisis offers the world an opportunity to forge a new human-centric concept of globalisation.

Key Points

• The rapid worldwide spread of Covid-19 has a lot to do with the fallout of globalisation, including the travel industry, tourism and the neoliberal attack on universal health care which can be understood by the examples of South Korea, Iran and Sri Lanka.
• South Korea:
  • The transmission of the Covid-19 in South Korea is related to the Shincheonji Church of Jesus. This cult facilitated the transmission of the disease from Wuhan to South Korea because of frequent travel among its followers.
• Iran:
  • The coronavirus was introduced in Iran through globalisation-triggered international alignment and incubated through political and religious processes.
  • The economic sanctions imposed by the U.S. dominated western countries compelled Iran to develop ties with China. Which in turn, made the traders act as the carriers of the viruses.
  • The initial hub of disease transmission in Iran was Qom, a popular pilgrimage centre for Shiite Muslims from where it reached the Iranian Parliament, having strong ties with Qom.
• Sri Lanka & India:
  • Here the onset of the Covid-19 has a lot to do with tourism and labour migration, processes intimately connected with globalisation.
  • Both in Sri Lanka and India, the first cases were reported among foreign tourists from China and Italy respectively.
  • The tour guides became the first set of local people exposed to the disease triggering local transmissions.
  • Both Sri Lanka and Kerala in India have large portions of their labour force employed overseas.
  • Returnees from these overseas destinations have contributed to the upsurge in the Covid-19 epidemic in South Asian countries.

Challenges

• The quarantine and social distancing processes may not be totally effective in so far as the migrant workers and their families are often in between two states, experiencing difficulties at both ends.
• Both migrant workers and tourist guides already experience discrimination of various kinds because of their occupations and the risks involved and the quarantine has added to their misery.

Way Forward

• The world needs to think beyond social distancing and quarantining the affected people and places.
• Broader and deeper issues like fallout from globalisation need to be analysed and questioned.
• In the recent G20 video conference, Indian Prime Minister stressed the world leaders to look at humanitarian aspects to global challenges like pandemics, climate change and terrorism, not just economic ones.
• The world needs to redefine the definition of globalisation and make it more human-centric instead of market and profit-oriented.
• There is a need to devote special attention to the needs of less developed countries as they might not contribute to the causes but face the severity of the situation far worse.

Fund raising – COVID-19

Part of: GS Prelims and GS-III- Economy terms

Recently, the Government has hiked Ways and Means Advance (WMA) limit with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) by 60%. (PT SHOT)

• WMA limit is proposed to be revised to Rs 1.20 lakh crore and would be reviewed on a need basis (from Rs 75,000 crore last year).
• This is to compensate for the cash flow mismatch in Financial Year (FY) 21 expected from higher spending to combat the spread of COVID-19.

Ways and Means Advance scheme

• The Ways and Means Advances scheme was introduced in 1997.
• The Ways and Means Advances scheme was introduced to meet mismatches in the receipts and payments of the government.
• The government can avail of immediate cash from the RBI, if required. But it has to return the amount within 90 days. Interest is charged at the existing repo rate.
• If the WMA exceeds 90 days, it would be treated as an overdraft (the interest rate on overdrafts is 2 percentage points more than the repo rate).
• The limits for Ways and Means Advances are decided by the government and RBI mutually and revised periodically.
• A higher limit provides the government flexibility to raise funds from RBI without borrowing them from the market.

PT “PIKUPS”

The government has announced a Rs 1.7 lakh crore package (Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana) to provide income support, free food and other facilities to the poor to help them during the 21-day national lockdown.

The fundraising resources are not only from the market, but also from institutions such as the RBI.

The Budget 2020-21 has pegged the Centre’s net market borrowing, including government securities, treasury bills and post office life insurance fund at Rs 5.36 lakh crore.

Out of gross borrowings of Rs 7.8 lakh crore in FY21, the Centre has proposed to borrow Rs 4.88 lakh crore, or 62.56%, in the first half of the fiscal, as against 62.25% done in the previous fiscal.

In FY21, the Centre also plans to issue the Debt Exchange Traded Fund comprising government securities to widen the base of investors.

Alcohol Sanitizers and Coronaviruses

Part of: GS Prelims and GS-III- S&T

• The novel coronavirus has a lipid envelope. Soap being a detergent destroys this envelope. The same is true for alcohol also.
• Structure of Lipid Envelope:
  • SARS-CoV-2 particles, like other coronaviruses, are spherical and have proteins called spikes protruding from their surface.
  • These spikes latch onto human cells, then undergo a structural change that allows the viral membrane to fuse with the cell membrane. The viral genes can then enter the host cell to be copied, producing more viruses.
  • Recent work shows that, like the virus that caused the 2002 SARS outbreak, SARS-CoV-2 spikes bind to receptors on the human cell surface called angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2).
  • All of this is held together by a fatty layer, called an envelope.
• Functioning of Alcohol in Sanitizers:
  • The Envelope layer is disrupted when it comes into contact with soap or a hand sanitiser with more than 60% alcohol.
  • Disruption of the envelope leads to the killing of the virus.
  • Handwashing for 20 seconds at least kills the virus.
• Indian Government’s Move: The Government has notified hand sanitizers as an essential commodity under the Essential Commodities Act, 1955.

Exchange Traded Fund

• An Exchange-Traded Fund (ETF) is a basket of securities that trade on an exchange, just like a stock.
• ETF reflects the composition of an Index, like BSE Sensex. Its trading value is based on the Net Asset Value (NAV) of the underlying stocks (such as shares) that it represents.
• ETF share prices fluctuate all day as it is bought and sold. This is different from mutual funds which only trade once a day after the market closes.
• An ETF can own hundreds or thousands of stocks across various industries, or it could be isolated to one particular industry or sector.