Filmmaker Karan Johar on Saturday announced his support to various relief funds and a host of NGOs to help those affected by the lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic. The producer will be donating to PM-CARES and Maharashtra Chief Minister’s Relief Fund through his banner Dharma Productions. The production house will also be helping out not-for-profits such as Give India Fundraisers, GOONJ, Zomato Feeding India, International Association for Human Values (IAHV) and Producers Guild of India. “Over the past month India has stood united in this decision to stay home and stay safe until we overcome this pandemic. But there is so much more to do in order to win the fight against this dreaded disease,” the production house said in a statement. “With the lockdown being extended, it’s only going to get harder on everyone, especially those workers and technicians who rely on daily wages for their livelihood. They are in a situation in which they don’t have clarity on where their next meal is coming from…and that can be scary…. very scary,” it added.
The world economy, already “sluggish” before the coronavirus outbreak, is now bound to suffer a “severe recession” in 2020, IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva has warned and said the current crisis posed “daunting challenges” for policymakers in many emerging markets and developing economies. Addressing the Development Committee Meeting during the annual Spring Meeting of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, the IMF Managing Director said a large global contraction in the first half of this year was inevitable. She said the coronavirus pandemic hit the world economy when it was already in a fragile state as it was weighed down by trade disputes, policy uncertainty and geopolitical tensions. “The global coronavirus outbreak is a crisis that is like no other and poses daunting challenges for policymakers in many emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs), especially where the pandemic encounters weak public health systems, capacity constraints, and limited policy space to mitigate the outbreak’s repercussions,” Georgieva said.
The US must take urgent additional steps to prevent tens of millions of middle-class Americans hit by the COVID-19 pandemic from plunging into poverty, an independent UN human rights expert has said. UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights Philip Alston has warned that significant portions of America will soon face destitution unless Congress takes “far-reaching” actions. “Low-income and poor people face far higher risks from the coronavirus due to chronic neglect and discrimination, and a muddled, corporate-driven, federal response [that] has failed them,” said Alston, who made a fact-finding visit to the US in 2017. He painted a grim picture of record layoffs, a weak safety net, and a government “focusing primarily on businesses and the well-off”. On March 27, President Donald Trump signed into law a historic USD 2 trillion emergency relief package which made its way through Congress, to provide stopgap funding for workers, small businesses and industry, impacted by the need to lockdown much of the country to halt the transmission of the COVID-19. The US must take urgent additional steps to prevent tens of millions of middle-class Americans hit by the COVID-19 pandemic from being “plunged into poverty”, he said. Over a four-week period, more than 22 million people have filed for unemployment and US Federal Reserve economists reportedly project up to 47 million job losses through the summer. Food bank use is skyrocketing and almost a third of housing tenants in the US reportedly did not pay April’s rent on time.
The Gujarat government has decided to carry out plasma transfusion treatment on COVID-19 patients in the state, particularly those in critical condition, to boost their immunity, health officials said. In this treatment, the plasma extracted from the blood of a fully recovered COVID-19 patient is injected into the critical patient to help his body generate antibodies to fight the virus. An antibody is a protein produced mainly by plasma cells that is used by the immune system to neutralize bacteria and viruses. The civil hospital in Ahmedabad and the civic body-run SVP Hospital here have prepared a detailed proposal about the plasma transfusion treatment for coronavirus patients and submitted it to the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) for approval, Principal Secretary, Health, Jayanti Ravi, said. “We have learned that the ICMR has given approval to the Kerala government for such plasma transfusion treatment. From Gujarat, Ahmedabad civil hospital and SVP Hospital have sought ICMR’s permission to start this treatment for coronavirus patients,” she said.
The San Diego Comic-Con (SDCC) has been cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic. It is the first time SDCC has been cancelled in its 50-year history. The event, scheduled to happen from July 23 to 26, was expected to attract more than 130,000 people to southern California. “Recognising that countless attendees save and plan for its conventions each year, and how many exhibitors and stakeholders rely upon its events for a major portion of their livelihood, (organisers) had hoped to delay this decision in anticipation that COVID-19 concerns might lessen by summer.
