Booster Dose: Corbevax

Image Source - The Financial Express

According to a recent announcement from the Indian government, persons who have already taken Covishield or Covaxin as their first or second dosage of Covid-19 may take Corbevax as their third booster shot.

Corbevax is still seeking the Emergency Use Listing (EUL)from the World Health Organization

Up until this point, the vaccination used for the third dose had to be the same as that for the first and second doses.

The choice was made when India's drug authorities authorized Corbevax as a heterologous Covid booster dose for people 18 years of age and above.

About the Corbevax Vaccine

• The two doses of Corbevax, which are spaced 28 days apart, are the country's first Receptor Binding Domain (RBD) protein subunit vaccination against Covid.

• The ideal storage range for India's needs is between 2 and 8 degrees Celsius.
• Working Principle: Corbevax is a "recombinant protein sub-unit" vaccine, meaning it contains a particular component of the SARS-CoV-2 virus: the spike protein on its surface.
• The spike protein enables the virus to penetrate the body's cells where it can reproduce and harm people.
• However, because the rest of the virus is missing when this protein is administered to the body, it is not anticipated to be detrimental.
• It is anticipated that the immune system will react negatively to the injected spike protein.
• Once the protein is recognized by the human immune system, white blood cells called antibodies are created to fight the infection.
• Consequently, the body will already be prepared for an immune reaction when the actual virus tries to infect it, making it unlikely that the individual will become ill.

Other types of Vaccines

Vaccinations that are inactivated:

• Inactivated vaccines employ a disease-causing bacterium that has been killed.

• These vaccines are made by rendering a pathogen inactive, usually using heat or chemicals like formaldehyde or formalin.
• While the pathogen's capacity to reproduce is destroyed, it is kept "intact" enough that the immune system can still detect it. (Viral vaccines of this kind are typically referred to as "inactivated" rather than "killed," as viruses are typically not thought of as being alive.)

Live-attenuated Vaccines:

• Live vaccines use a disease-causing microbe in a weaker (or attenuated) form.

• These vaccines produce a potent and robust immune response because they closely resemble the natural infection that they help avoid.

mRNA Vaccines:

• mRNA vaccines produce proteins to stimulate an immune response. mRNA vaccines have several advantages over other vaccine kinds, including quicker manufacturing timeframes and no risk of infection in the recipient due to the absence of a live virus.

• The vaccinations provide defense against Covid-19.
• The toxin (harmful substance) produced by the pathogen that causes a disease is used in toxoid vaccines.
• Instead of the germ itself, they develop immunity to the components of the germ that are responsible for a disease. This indicates that the immune response is focused on the poison rather than the entire germ.
• Live vaccinations make use of a disease-causing bacterium that has been weakened or attenuated.

Vaccines with a viral vector:

• Vaccines with a viral vector give protection by using a modified form of a different virus.

• The influenza virus, the vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV), the measles virus, and the adenovirus that causes the common cold have all been utilized as vectors.

Digital Currency

• Over 7% of India's population possessed digital currency in 2021, according to a recent report by the United Nations Trade and Development Body (UNCTAD).
• Additionally, India was rated eighth in terms of population ownership of digital currencies among the top 20 economies worldwide.

Image Source - Techcabal

HIGHLIGHT

• When it comes to the percentage of the population that owns cryptocurrency, developing nations made up 15 of the top 20 economies.
• On the list, Ukraine came in first, followed by Russia, Venezuela, Singapore, Kenya, and the United States.
• During the Covid-19 pandemic, cryptocurrency use multiplied globally, particularly in developing nations.

Issues Highlighted by the Study

• Private digital currencies are unstable financial assets that can increase social risks and costs while also rewarding some users and facilitating remittances.

Unregulated:

• Because these digital currencies are not regulated, there has been a sharp increase in demand for them in developing nations because they make remittances easier and serve as an inflation hedge.

Volatile System:

• Recent market shocks in the digital currency space indicate that there are private dangers associated with holding cryptocurrency, but if the central bank intervenes to preserve financial stability, the issue becomes a public one.

Risks to Monetary Sovereignty:

• The monetary sovereignty of nations may be at risk if cryptocurrencies take off as a common form of payment and perhaps informally replace national currencies (a process known as a crypto nation).

Undermine Local Policies:

• In developing nations, cryptocurrencies can make it more difficult to mobilize domestic resources.

What are the Suggestions Highlighted by the Study?

• Remittances can be made easier by the government, but they can also make it easier to evade and avoid taxes by allowing illicit flows.
• The study urged authorities to take action to stop the spread of cryptocurrencies in emerging markets, including ensuring thorough financial regulation of cryptocurrencies through the regulation of crypto exchanges, digital wallets, and decentralised finance, as well as by forbidding regulated financial institutions from holding cryptocurrencies (including stablecoins) or providing customers with related products.
• Additionally, it asked for curbs on digital currency promotion, just like with other high-risk financial assets.
• Providing a public payment system that is cost-efficient, dependable, and secure for the digital era;
• Redesign capital controls to account for the decentralized, omnipresent, and pseudonymous aspects of digital currencies.
• Implement global tax harmonization on digital currency tax procedures, legislation, and information sharing.

Digital Currency

• A sort of money that can only be obtained digitally or electronically is known as a digital currency.
• Other names for it include cybercash, electronic currency, digital money, and digital money.
• It has no physical characteristics and can only be acquired digitally.
• Digital currency transactions are carried out through the use of computers or electronic wallets linked to the internet or specific networks.
• In contrast, tangible currencies have distinct physical properties and characteristics, such as banknotes and coins that have been produced.

Features:

• Both centralized and decentralized digital currencies exist.
• Fiat currency is produced and distributed centrally by a central bank and other governmental organizations and exists in physical form.
• Decentralized digital money systems include well-known cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum.
• Types: The electronic world uses a variety of currencies. There are primarily three types of currencies:

• Cryptocurrencies
• Digital currencies known as cryptocurrencies use cryptography to safeguard and validate network transactions.
• The development of such currencies is managed and regulated through the use of cryptography.
• A couple of instances of cryptocurrencies include Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Virtual currencies

• Virtual currencies are unregulated digital currencies that are managed by developers or a founding organization made up of different process participants.
• A predetermined network protocol can likewise be used to algorithmically govern virtual currencies.
• A gaming network token is an illustration of virtual money, and its economics are established and managed by developers.

Central bank digital currency

• Central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) are regulated digital currencies that are issued by a country's central bank.
• A CBDC can be used in addition to or in substitution for conventional fiat money.
• A CBDC only exists in digital form, in a contrast to fiat currency, which also exists in physical form.
• A few of the countries considering introducing a digital version of their domestic fiat currencies are Uruguay, England, and Sweden.

Advantages

Fast transaction time

• The time required for transfers involving digital currencies is extremely quick because they typically operate inside the same network and complete transactions without the use of middlemen.

Do not require Physical Manufacturing & Saves costs:

• Digital currencies do not need to build real production facilities, which is one of the many criteria for physical currencies. These currencies are also resistant to stains or physical flaws that can occur with real money.

Ease Implementation of Monetary and Fiscal Policy:

• Under the current monetary system, the Central bank channels funds into an economy through a network of intermediaries, including banks and financial institutions. CBDCs can assist in getting around this system and letting a government organization pay people directly.

Disadvantages

• Because of their digital origin, digital currencies are vulnerable to hacking. Hackers have the ability to take digital currency from online wallets or alter the protocol, rendering them useless.
• Volatile Value: Prices for digital currencies used in trading can fluctuate wildly.
• The decentralized nature of cryptocurrencies, for instance, has led to the proliferation of weakly funded digital currencies, whose valuations are susceptible to jarring shifts depending on investor whims.

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African ‘orphan’ Crop

Researchers recently discovered genes in the regional food crops of Africa that can increase drought tolerance.

About Orphan crops

• Orphan crops are wholesome regional food crops that could be extremely important in the fight against hunger.
• Although they are not traded worldwide, these crops have evolved to be able to flourish in inclement weather.

Crops

Orphan crops including African yam bean, jojoba, jatropha, and finger and small millet are frequently found across the continent.

Significance

Changing weather

• It provides a remedy for growing worries that crop yield will be hampered by climate change.
• It had discovered genes with minimal water requirements, higher salinity tolerance, and high-temperature tolerance that provided vital nourishment.

Increasing crop yield

• These genes could be included to increase crop yield, which is impacted by heatwaves and rising global temperatures.

Combatting Heat Waves

• The extended heat waves are anticipated to have an impact on nations like Pakistan and India.

Role of Africa

• By 2050, it is predicted that Africa would contribute to supplying 25% of the world's population with food.

Butterfly Mine

The contentious "Butterfly Mine," an anti-personnel mine that is meant to prevent free movement of the soldiers along the enemy line, is said to have been used by Russia in the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine.

About

• Anti-personnel landmines with the designations PFM-1 and PFM-1S are sometimes known as "Butterfly mines" or "Green Parrots."
• These names were taken from the mines' shape and color.
• The PFM-1S mine's self-destruction mechanism activates within one to forty hours, which is the primary distinction between PFM-1S and the PFM-1 mine.

Specifications

• It is extremely touch-sensitive, and even picking it up can cause it to react.
• This little mine frequently maims and injures the handler rather than killing them because of the relatively less explosive that is packed inside of it.
• Because they are plastic and may avoid metal detectors, these mines are especially challenging to find
• These mines can be placed in the area of conflict in a number of ways, such as by dropping them from helicopters or dispersing them with artillery and mortar bombs.

Which mines are permitted under international law?

• On landlines, antipersonnel mines are prohibited by an International treaty, but Russia and Ukraine have not ratified them.
• Russia and Ukraine are parties to the 1996 Amended Protocol II (also known as the Landlines Protocol) to the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons.

Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD)

The likelihood of above-average rainfall over much of Australia has increased due to a negative Indian Ocean dipole event that has been proclaimed.

What is the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD)?

• It is an atmosphere-ocean coupled phenomenon in the tropical Indian Ocean (like the El Nino is in the tropical Pacific), characterized by a difference in sea-surface temperatures.
• A ‘positive IOD’ — or simply ‘IOD’ — is associated with cooler than normal sea-surface temperatures in the eastern equatorial Indian Ocean and warmer than normal sea-surface temperatures in the western tropical Indian Ocean.
• The opposite phenomenon is called a ‘negative IOD’, and is characterised by warmer than normal SSTs in the eastern equatorial Indian Ocean and cooler than normal SSTs in the western tropical Indian Ocean

More About Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD)

• The difference in sea surface temperature between two regions (or poles, hence a dipole) — a western pole in the Arabian Sea (western Indian Ocean) and an eastern pole in the eastern Indian Ocean south of Indonesia — defines it.
• According to science, the IOD is an ENSO-like coupled ocean-atmosphere event that occurs in the equatorial Indian Ocean.
• It is believed that the IOD and ENSO occurrences are connected by the Walker Circulation's westward expansion and its related Indonesian throughflow (the flow of warm tropical ocean water from the Pacific into the Indian Ocean).
• The IOD significantly contributes to the variability of rainfall in this area and has an impact on the climate of Australia and other nations that border the Indian Ocean Basin.

The positive event linked to it

• Less cloud cover to Australia's northwest, warmer sea surface temperatures in the western Indian Ocean compared to the east, easterly wind anomalies across the Indian Ocean, and less rainfall over southern Australia and the Top End

Negative event:

• Winds turn more westward, increasing cloud cover in Australia's northwest and increasing rainfall in the Top End and southern Australia due to cooler sea surface temperatures in the western Indian Ocean compared to the east.