India Coronavirus Dispatch: Waiting time, Co-Win glitches hamper roll-out

Hundreds of Covid beds go empty in Delhi, new algorithm shows promise of creating pan-influenza vaccine, arthritis drug to be tested for Covid treatment-news relevant to India's fight against Covid-19

IN NUMBERS: Over 17,000 fresh cases reported

India reported 17,407 fresh coronavirus infections on Thursday, taking the cumulative caseload to 11,156,923, according to a report in the Scroll. Maharashtra accounted for nearly 10,000 of those infections. The country saw 89 new deaths due to the pandemic, taking the death toll to 157,435, according to central health ministry data. The active caseload is at 173,413, while the total recoveries have surged to 10,826,075. As many as 16,616,048 people have been inoculated since the nationwide inoculation programme kicked off on January 16. Of these, 994,452 received their shots on Wednesday. Read more here

New Delhi: Hundreds of beds earmarked for Covid going empty

Hospitals in New Delhi are still keeping hundreds of beds on standby to treat Covid-19 patients even though most are going empty, a report in ThePrint said. Of the 5,711 beds across all government and private hospitals in the city earmarked for Covid treatment, only 516 or 9 per cent were occupied as of March 2, the report said citing data from the Delhi Fights Corona app set up by the Delhi government. “We have so many patients, who can be benefitted from those beds, but we have to refer them elsewhere because of lack of space,” a doctor at RML hospital told ThePrint. Read more here

Mumbai-based drugmaker gets nod to test arthritis drug in Covid treatment

The central government's expert panel on drug approval has given its nod to Mumbai-based drugmaker Lupin to test its auto-immune drug called Etanercept in the treatment of Covid-19, a report in ThePrint said. The drugmaker has been given permission to carry out phase 2 clinical trials on Etanercept by the subject expert committee (SEC) which advises the Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) on applications seeking approvals for new drugs, vaccines, and clinical trials. Etanercept is used to treat rheumatoid arthritis and some other inflammatory conditions. Read more here

First few days of vaccination programme see long wait times, Co-Win glitches

The first few days in the second phase of the Covid-19 vaccination programme saw long waiting times, people being turned away as the vaccines had not arrived in time at vaccination centres, and persistent glitches in the Co-Win platform, a report in Hindustan Times said. “The Co-Win platform can get very slow, which is why we turned away some appointments. I think it is not able to take the load. Most people prefer coming to the hospital directly for registration, which leads to overcrowding,” a staff member at a private Delhi hospital told the Hindustan Times. Read more here

Algorithm shows promise of creating a pan-influenza vaccine

A new computer algorithm could offer a path towards creating a pan-influenza vaccine and possibly a pan-coronavirus vaccine as well, a report in The Indian Express said citing a new research paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Communications. The algorithm called Epigraph has previously been used to predict therapeutic HIV vaccine candidates. Read more here