UPSC Daily Current Affairs | Prelim Bits 09-06-2020

List of Treatments for COVID-19 used in India

Remdesivir

• Remdesivir, an antiviral drug first developed for treating Ebola in 2014, is one of the possible Covid-19 treatments being investigated in the WHO’s Solidarity Trial. It inhibits viral replication in the body.
• US National Institutes of Allergies and Infectious Diseases released preliminary trial results showing recovery time of Covid patients given remdesivir improved from 15 to 11 days.
• The Drug Controller General of India on June 1 approved a five-day regime of remdesivir.
• Doctors are currently prescribing it for moderately to severely ill patients.
• Remdesivir costs Rs 10,000-20,000 per vial.

Favipiravir

• Favipiravir is an antiviral given to inhibit viral replication, It is used as an anti-influenza drug.
• First manufactured by Japan’s Fujifilm Toyama Chemical Ltd, it is manufactured in India by Glenmark Pharmaceutical and Strides Pharma.
• It is being used for moderately symptomatic to severely ill Covid patients, but access is not easy.

Tocilizumab

• This is an immunosuppressant commonly used to treat for rheumatoid arthritis.
• This is an expensive drug, that costs Rs 40,000-60,000 per dose, it is used as a preventive against ventilator requirement, government hospitals are giving it free.
• Tocilizumab is manufactured by Roche Pharma, and marketed by Cipla.
• In India it is sold under the brand name Actemra.

Itolizumab

• This drug is commonly used for the skin disorder psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, and autoimmune disorders. In India, Biocon launched it in 2013.
• It is being trailled in Mumbai and Delhi on moderately to severely ill Covid patients. Initial results will come by July. “The trial will take some time. We are yet to assess its outcome,” said Dr Joshi, Nair Hospital Dean.

Hydroxychloroquine

• This antimalarial drug is a subject of debate over its efficacy against Covid.
• India is the largest producer of this drug.
• Doctors use HCQ use in Covid patients with symptoms as mild as headache, fever, body pain, and even in critically ill patients.
• ICMR guidelines recommend low doses for nine days.
• This drug is helping in faster recovery, but that is just preliminary assessment.
• Side effects of the drug includes chaotic heartbeat.

Doxycycline + ivermectin

• Doxycycline is an antibiotic used to fight infection in the urinary tract, eye, or respiratory tract.
• Ivermectin is an anti-parasite drug for treatment of scabies, head lice, and filariasis.
• The combination is used to treat Covid patients with acute symptoms.
•  There is very little information about these two drugs on Covid-19 patients and It is still in experimental stage.

Ritonavir + lopinavir

• These antivirals are commonly used to treat HIV patients.
• They are being investigated in the Solidarity Trial.
• Some studies suggest they reduce mortality risk in Covid-19 patients, while others have found no major improvement.
• Over a dozen manufacturers supply ritonavir and lopinavir in India.
• Doctors sometimes use the combination for severely ill patients.

Plasma therapy

• This is meant for critical patients with low oxygen saturation levels, or those suffering a cytokine storm.
• Patients who have recovered from severe Covid-19 donate their plasma, which is then injected into other critical patients to boost their immunity.
• A protocol approved by ICMR is used to select which patient is best suited for plasma therapy.
• Preference is given to those at risk of cytokine storm, extreme breathlessness with severe pneumonia.

Raygada District

• Rayagada is a district in southern Odisha, a state in India, which became a separate district in October 1992.
• Its population consists mainly of tribes, primarily the Khonds and the Soras.
• In addition to Odia, Kui and Sora are spoken by the district's indigenous population.
• It was founded by Maharajah Vishwanath Dev Gajapati of the Suryavansh dynasty of Jeypore.
• The district is reportedly rich in bauxite and silicon.
• Recently 30 confirmed cases of chikungunya, has been reported from the district.

Jeypore Dynasty

• The Kingdom of Jeypore or Jeypore Kalinga Rajya was a kingdom in the Kalinga region ruled by the kings of the Suryavansh dynasty, who trace their origins from ‘Dev’ Suryavanshis of Jammu & Kashmir and thus claim to be the descendants of Rama.

• It was an independent princely state from 1443 to 1775 and a princely estate under British rule from 1776 to 1947.
• It had three capitals under different rulers: Nandapur, Rayagada and Jeypore, the most prominent.
• It was the largest of all princely states and estates in the Madras Presidency, covering an area of 31,079 km2 in 1880 and 36,259 km2 in 1925.
• Despite being the largest kingdom, it never had the status of a princely state because it lost the crucial feudatories of Bobbili, Vizianagaram, Kalahandi, Salur, Srungavarapukota, Nowagarh, Khariar and Gajapathinagaram, which clinched independence from Jeypore and were later recognized as princely estates under British Rule.
• The last ruler of the kingdom was King Vikram Dev IV when the estate was dissolved in 1947 and merged into the Union of India.

Chikungunya

• Chikungunya virus is an arbovirus that belongs to the genus Alphavirus.
• It is a viral disease that is spread by the bite of Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus mosquitoes.
• Symptoms usually appear within a week of infection, It causes fever and severe joint pain.
• Other symptoms include muscle pain, headache, nausea, fatigue and rash.
• Joint pain is often debilitating and can vary in duration.
• The disease is most prevalent in in Africa, South- Asia and India.

Edward Colston

• Colston was born in 1636 to a merchant family that had been living in Bristol since the 14th century.
• In 1680, he joined the Royal African Company (RAC), which had a monopoly in England on the trade of gold, silver, ivory, and slaves, along the west coast of Africa.
• The ships of the Company enjoyed the protection of the Royal Navy, and the traders made good profits.
• Many of the enslaved Africans were branded with the initials ‘DY’, standing for Duke of York.
• They were shipped to Barbados and other Caribbean islands to work on the new sugar plantations, as well as further north to England’s American colonies.
• Colston rose up to the company’s board quite rapidly, taking on the position of Deputy Governor in 1689.
• During the period of his involvement with RAC till 1692, the company is believed to have transported about 84,000 slaves, out of which close to 20,000 are known to have died.
• Bristol, Liverpool, Glasgow, and London were the key ports for British companies trafficking African slaves across the Atlantic.
•  The merchants, shipbuilders, sailors involved in the trade were a major source of income and wealth for these cities.
• Colston was one such slave trade magnate, who funded a wide range of charitable projects in Bristol and London, including schools and almshouses for the poor of the city, thereby developing the reputation of a philanthropist.
• Recently in the English port city of Bristol, a group of 10,000 demonstrators pulled down a 125-year-old statue of 17th century slave trader Edward Colston and dragged it through the city’s streets into the harbour of river Avon.

Winston Churchill

• He was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945, when he led the country to victory in the Second World War, and again from 1951 to 1955.
• Ideologically an economic liberal and imperialist, he was for most of his career a member of the Conservative Party, as leader from 1940 to 1955, He was also a member of the Liberal Party from 1904 to 1924.
• The wartime prime minister of the country, known for his ‘indomitable spirit’ among the British, has also been accused by historians for his racist, imperial policies that led to the death of many in British India.
• Recently in central London, the statue of former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was vandalized and demonstrators reportedly wrote ‘was a racist’ on it.

King Leopold

• Leopold II was King of the Belgians from 1865 to 1909, he succeeded his father to the Belgian throne in 1865 and reigned for 44 years until his death – the longest reign of any Belgian monarch.
• Leopold was the founder and sole owner of the Congo Free State, a private project undertaken on his own behalf.
• He used Henry Morton Stanley to help him lay claim to the Congo, the present-day Democratic Republic of the Congo.
• He extracted a fortune from the territory, initially by the collection of ivory, and after a rise in the price of rubber in the 1890s, by forced labour from the native population to harvest and process rubber.
• He used great sums of the money from this exploitation for public and private construction projects in Belgium during this period.
• Leopold's administration of the Congo was characterized by murder, torture, and atrocities, resulting from notorious systematic brutality.
• Recently in Belgium demonstrator’s targeted statues of the 19th century monarch King Leopold II, whose administration of the Congo has been heavily criticized for the atrocities and exploitation it led to.

Jal-Jeevan Mission

• The Ministry of Jal Shakti has been working with the States in preparing a roadmap to implement the PM flagship programme Jal Jeevan Mission.
• It aims to provide 55 litres of potable water per person per day to every rural household of the country by 2024.
• Under JJM, provision has been made to test every source once for chemical parameters and twice for bacteriological contamination (pre and post monsoon) in a year as a part of water quality monitoring.
• Recently Karnataka presented its Annual Action Plan for implementation of Jal Jeevan Mission.
• According to the plan the state is planning 100% household coverage by 2022-23.
• Out of 89 lakh rural households in the State, 24.50 lakh have been provided with tap connections (FHTCs).
• In 2020-21, the State is planning to enable 23.57 lakh households with tap water connections.
• Further, State is planning for 100% coverage of 1 district, 5 blocks and 8,157 villages during 2020-21.
• Karnataka State has 2 aspirational districts, so the State has been advised to give priority to these areas while planning.
• Similarly focus should be on universal coverage of quality-affected habitations, water scarce areas, SC/ ST dominated villages and villages under Sansad Adarsh Gram Yojana.
• State plans to engage women self-help groups and voluntary organisations to mobilize the rural community for creation of in-village water supply infrastructure as well as for their operation and maintenance.

Sansad Adarsh Gram Yojana

• It is a rural development programme broadly focusing upon the development in the villages which includes social development, cultural development and spread motivation among the people on social mobilization of the village community.
• The programme was launched on the birth anniversary of Jayaprakash Narayan, on 11 October 2014.
• The distinct feature of this Yojana is that it is

(a) Demand driven

(b) Inspired by society

(c) Based on people's participation.

• Under this Yojana, each Member of Parliament needs to choose one village each from the constituency that they represent, except their own village or their in-laws village and fix parameters and make it a model village by 2019.
• Villages will be offered smart schools, universal access to basic health facilities and Pucca housing to homeless villagers.
• No new funds are allocated to this Yojana and funds may be raised through

1. Funds from existing schemes, such as the Indira Awas Yojana, Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana, Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, and Backward Regions Grant Fund, etc.,
2. The Member of Parliament Local Area Development Scheme (MPLADS),
3. The gram panchayat’s own revenue,
4. Central and State Finance Commission Grants, and
5. Corporate Social Responsibility funds.

Operational Guidelines for SBM –II

• The operational guidelines for the second phase of the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM II) were released by the Department of Drinking Water and Sanitation (DDWS) under the Union Ministry of Jal (water) Shakti.
• The guidelines hold significance as the country deals with the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic.
• The guidelines talk about building more toilets or community toilet complexes to not leave anybody out.
• They also mention availability of adequate water or storage facilities of water for these toilets.
• They, however, do not mention clearly how water availability to toilets will be connected.
• Bottlenecks over the availability of water in toilets and solutions to make the mission a success are not explained either,There is only a mention of recharging groundwater by greywater.
• ram Panchayats should converge village action plans (VAP) for SBM and Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM), according to the guidelines.
• Greywater management in villages should be planned in consonance with piped water supply already provided to villages / planned to be provided under JJM or any other state schemes.
• The VAP for SBM and JJM should be part of their overall gram panchayat development plans, the guidelines said.
• The programme will be implemented in close coordination and convergence with:

1. JJM for greywater management
2. Finance Commission funds for co-financing of assets
3. National Rural Employment Guarantee Act for dovetailing funds and functionaries
4. Union Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship for skill development of field functionaries
5. National Rural Livelihood Mission for involving self-help groups as vehicles for behaviour change communication
6. New National Biogas Organic Manure Programme scheme of the Union Ministry of New and Renewable Energy
7. Sustainable alternative towards affordable transportation scheme of Union Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas for Galvanizing Organic Bio-Agro Resources Dhan projects
8. States can identify any other schemes at their level and converge them to ensure attainment of SBM II objectives, according to the guidelines.

Haldwani Bio-Diversity Park

• Uttrakhand opened its biggest biodiversity park in Haldwani on the World Environment Day (5th June).
• Inside the Park, there are thematic gardens, a soil museum, species of plants, lichens, mosses and algae from the Jurassic era, a vermicomposting unit, an interpretation center, and a state-of-the-art weather station.
• The Park has 40 unique sections having 479 rare plant species of cactus, medicinal herbs, different types of trees, etc.
• The various species of plants have been brought to the park from diverse terrains like Niti Mana Valley and even from some glaciers around Kedarnath.
• Niti Mana Valley is located near the India Tibetan Border in Chamoli district of Uttarakhand.
• The plant species in the biodiversity park is divided into spiritual & religious, scientific, human health, and aesthetic value sections.
• The spiritual section has trees that find mention in holy scriptures like Guru Granth Sahib, Quran, Bible, and others.
• It showcases the different kinds of soil found in various topographies of Uttarakhand — alpine, bhabhar, sub-mountainous, mountainous, tertiary, loam, terai.

Source: PIB, Indian Express, DTE