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Thursday 9 April 2020

Latest Current Affairs: 7 April 2020

Current Affairs
7th APRIL 2020
April 7: World Health Day
April 7 is marked as the World Health Day. The day is marked to celebrate the work of midwives and nurses for their role in keeping the world safety and healthy. This year, 2020, has added significance of marking the World Health Day for the year being celebrated as International Year of Nurse and Midwife.
The World Health Day is marked by World Health Organization along with several other organizations. On the world health day, the State of World Nursing Report, 2020 is to be released. Every year, the theme of the World Health Day is selected by WHO. This year the day is to be marked under the theme.
ThemeSupport Nurses and Midwives
Cabinet: Ordinance to cut salary of PM and MPs by 30% approved
  • The Union Cabinet approved to cut the salary of Prime Minister and other MPs by 30%. Apart from them, the salaries of president, governor and vice president are also to be cut.
  • The amount cut from the members are to go to consolidated fund of India. The Cabinet has also approved that the MPLADS are to be suspended for 2 years that is between 2020-21 and 2021-22. With this move, Government of India has saved 7,900 crores.

A Tiger tests positive of COVID-19 in the US: Zoos on high alert in the country
  • The Central Zoo Authority of the United States asked all the zoos to stay on high alert after a tiger tested positive of COVID-19. This is the first time COVID-19 infections are reported on an animal.
  • A four-year-old Malayan tiger in the Bronx Zoo of New York has tested positive of Corona Virus.  It is still not known how the disease will develop in cats.
  • This is because different species behave differently. Till date there is no evidence that animals play a major role in COVID-19 transmission.
  • Also, there is no evidence that a human can be infected by the virus from animals.

Lifeline UDAN
  • The Lifeline UDAN was launched by the Ministry of Civil Aviation to help India fight against COVID-19.
  • Under this initiative, flights were operated in transporting essential equipment and medicines all over the country.
  • The Lifeline UDAN initiative was a huge success as in just 5 days of its launch, more than 15.4 tonnes of essential supplies have been transported in 62 aircrafts.
  • The products transported included masks and gloves, consumables, etc. In order help public to track Lifeline Udan flights, the status of the flights were uploaded in a portal. The portal was developed by National Informatics Centre.
  • The initiative provided a special focus to the north-eastern region and to the Ladakh region. For the ease of flight operation, the flight hubs were set up in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Hyderabad and Bengaluru.

Established by Government of India to support startups working on COVID-19: CAWACH
  • The Department of Science and Technology has set up a Centre for Augmenting WAR with COVID-19 Health crisis. The center is to be established at Rs. 56.
  • The CAWACH is being established by the DST to support the start-ups. It is to be implemented by SINE, IIT Bombay. The initiative will help identify innovative solutions to address the country’s need in diagnostics, ventilators and therapeutics.
  • The Programme will also guide the startups if in need at various stages. The expertise of DST will be deployed to support the startups in order to fast track the journey and scale up across geographies.

Testing, treatment is free for Ayushman Bharat beneficiaries
  • National Health Authority (NHA) announced that more than 50 crore eligible citizens under the health insurance scheme of  Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (AB-PMJAY) will avail free testing through private labs and treatment for COVID-19 in empanelled hospitals to increase the supply of testing and treatment facilities in the country.

Central government constitutes 10-member group headed by NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh kant to fight corona
  • In order to deal with this coronavirus (COVID-19) epidemic, the central government has constituted a 10-member group under the chairmanship of NITI (National Institution for Transforming India) Aayog CEO (Chief Executive Officer) Amitabh Kant.
  • The work of this group will primarily identify issues through 3 groups of stakeholders, then present effective measures to address solutions to the issues related to the formulation of plans for counter-activities related to COVID-19. The 3 groups includes
  1. The UN agencies, World Bank, Asian Development Bank (ADB)
  2. Civil Society Organisations and development partners
  3. Industry associations – CII (Confederation of Indian Industry), FICCI ( Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry), ASSOCHAM (Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India), NASSCOM (National Association of Software and Service Companies).
  • NITI Aayog write to the over 92,000 NGOs (Non-governmental organizations) / CSOs (civil society organization) registered on its ‘Darpan’ portal to help the government identify hotspots, the elderly, the differently-abled, children & other vulnerable groups to fight against the virus.
  • Other members of Committee include Dr Vijayaraghavan, PSA, Kamal Kishore (Member, NDMA); Sandeep Mohan Bhatnagar (Member, CBIC); Anil Malik (AS, MHA); Vikram Doraiswami, (AS, MEA); P. Harish (AS, MEA); Gopal Baglay (JS, PMO); Aishvarya Singh (DS, PMO); Tina Soni (DS, Cabinet Secretariat); and Sanyukta Samaddar (Adviser, SDG, NITI Aayog).

Short Notes
  • Hockey India donates additional 75 lakh rupees towards PM-CARES Fund.
  • Ministry of Human Resource and Development had launch “MHRD AICTE COVID-19 Student Helpline portal”.
  • The state of Tamil Nadu has topped the all-India level for micro-irrigation (MI), under Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana (PMKSY), with a coverage of 2,06,853.25 ha for the year financial year 2019-20.
  • Naveen Patnaik conferred PETA’s “Hero to Animals Award”for feeding community animals.
  • Start-up Aerobiosys Innovations at IIT-Hyderabad develops low-cost ventilator called ‘Jeevan Lite’

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