THURSDAY Boeing 737 Max can fly again as US regulator ends ban 19 NOVEMBER, 2020 The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) had put in place grounding orders in March 2019 after two deadly crashes epaper.morningstandard.in twitter.com/TheMornStandard However, the clearance does not mean the plane can take to the skies immediately. Existing aircraft will need to be modified before going back into service, with changes to their design. Alongside the software and wiring changes, pilots will also need training. PLASMA THERAPY ICMR WARNS ON INDISCRIMATE USE The research body has now specified strict criteria for its use in Covid patients PAGE 7 346 CHANGES IN DESIGN, SOFTWARE AND WIRING facebook.com/TheMorningStandard A CAPITAL VIEW OF NEWS  NEW DELHI  J8.00  PAGES 12 People were killed in two Boeing 737 Max accidents AIRCRAFT WILL BE 100% SAFE, SAYS FAA A probe found that a feature to stop the plane from climbing too fast and stalling had improperly forced the nose of the plane down. FAA chief Steve Dickson said he is “100% confident” in safety of the plane DELHI COVID WATCH STATUS OF CASES RECOVERED DEATH ACTIVE CASES TOTAL +VE Today 6,901 131 -7486 Cumulative 4,52,683 7,943 42,458 5,03,084 PATIENT MANAGEMENT Total beds Occupied Vacant H OS P I TA L 16,884 9,343 7,541 CARE CENTRE 8,217 568 7,146* H E A LT H C E N T R E 562 219 343 *503 BEDS OF CCC ARE OCCUPIED BY PERSONS UNDER QUARANTINE INCLUDING TRAVELLERS WHO CAME BY VANDE BHARAT MISSION AND BUBBLE FLIGHTS 24,842 HOME ISOLATION TESTING STATUS 19,085 A communter undergoes Covid test in Noida on Wednesday. People arriving from Delhi are being randomly tested | PARVEEN NEGI Over 1K Covid beds, 60,000 RT-PCR tests daily in Delhi SA N A S H A K I L @ New Delhi AROUND 1,100 additional Covid beds will be made available in Delhi while daily testing capacity increased to 60,000 RTPCR tests, the Union Ministry of Home Affairs announced on Wednesday . It further said that 45 doctors and 160 paramedics from the paramilitary forces have arrived in Delhi for deployment on Covid duties, while the Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) has dispatched 250 ventilators from Bengaluru which are expected to reach Delhi by the end of this week. The Indian Railways is making available coaches with 800 beds at the Shakur Basti railway to be used as health and isolation centres, the MHA EXPRESS READ Pak resorts to heavy shelling in Poonch Jammu: Pakistan’s army violated ceasefire twice on Wednesday and resorted to heavy firing and mortar shelling in forward areas along the LoC in J&K’s Poonch district, officials said, adding that Indian Army retaliated befittingly. Pakistan troops have violated ceasefire 37 times this month. 3 buildings forfeited in Iqbal Mirchi case: ED Mumbai: Three properties of late gangster Iqbal Mirchi, worth about `500 crore, have been “forfeited” under the provisions of two central laws against smugglers, foreign exchange manipulators and narcotic operatives, the ED said. The immovable assets are located in Worli area of Mumbai. said, adding that doctors and para-medics from paramilitary forces will man these coaches. Side-by-side, the DRDO will double ICU beds to 500 apart from creating 35 BIPAP beds in the next three-four days at its Covid hospital near the Delhi airport. The ministry also announced that the planning for house-to-house survey in Delhi is in the advanced stage and the survey is expected to begin by the end of the week and com- CITY RECORDS 131 DEATHS, HIGHEST DAILY TOLL Delhi recorded 7,486 fresh Covid-19 cases on Wednesday, taking the infection tally in the city to over five lakh, while 131 new fatalities — the highest single-day death count till date — pushed the toll to 7,943. pleted by November 25. These measures to ramp up Covid care facilities come in the wake of 12 decisions taken at a high-level meeting chaired by Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Sunday after Delhi saw a fresh spike in cases. Delhi has seen a steep rise in Covid cases since October 28 when the daily rise breached the 5,000-mark for the first time. It crossed the 8,000-mark on November 11. Delhi recorded MORE MANPOWER FOR LABS, EQUIPMENT AS WELL ICMR will also help in augmenting capacity by 2,000 tests of existing Delhi labs by deploying more manpower, increasing shifts and placing more equipment and through engagement with private labs 43,147 RTPCR/CBNAAT/ TrueNat tests conducted Rapid antigen test conducted today 55,90,654 2,94,244 Total tests done so far Tests per million CONTAINMENT ZONES AS ON DATE: 4444 Source: Delhi health bulletin | November 18 6,396 cases on Tuesday, taking the infection tally to over 4.95 lakh while 99 fatalities pushed the toll to 7,812. The government has linked the Covid surge to the festive season, noncompliance of safety behaviour and rising pollution in the city . “The ministry has constituted 10 multi-disciplinary teams to visit more than 100 private hospitals in Delhi for assessing bed utilisation and testing capacity and to identify extra ICU beds. Visits by the teams are underway,” the MHA spokesperson tweeted. Also, the ICMR and the Delhi government are working together to enhance RT-PCR testing capacity to 60,000 tests by the end of November. Testing capacity has already been enhanced by 10,000 tests per day . India’s first Gau Cabinet to come up in MP, 6 depts will look after cow welfare E X P R E S S N E W S S E R V I C E @ Bhopal A day after announcing the introduction of a Bill against ‘love jihad’ in the next session of the Vidhan Sabha, the Bharatiya Janata Party government in Madhya Pradesh on Wednesday decided to set up perhaps the country’s first ‘cow cabinet’ for the protection and promotion of cows. Announcing the decision, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan tweeted, “It has been decided to constitute a Gau Cabinet (cow cabinet) for cattle conservation and promotion. It will comprise animal husbandry, far mers’ welfare, forest, panchayat-rural development, home and revenue departments. The first meeting of the cow cabinet will be held at the cow sanctuary in Agar-Malwa district on Gopashthami festival on Nov 22.” Besides Chouhan, the cabinet will include Home Minister Narottam Mishra, Forest Minister Vijay Shah, Agriculture Minister Kamal Patel, Panchayat and Rural Development Minister Mahendra Singh Sisodia and Minister for Animal Husbandry Prem Singh Patel. Six departments will execute the decisions of the gau-cabinet in a coordinated manner, the chief minister stated. Among the objectives are marketing products made from cow milk and increasing the use of cow dung cakes. Reacting to the development, the Opposition Congress said it falls short of the BJP’s 2018 prepoll promise of creating a separate cow ministry. “The same Shivraj Singh Chouhan, who before 2018 Assembly polls had promised to form a separate Cow Ministry and put in place a series of cow sanctuaries and cowsheds is now talking about constituting a Cow Cabinet,” tweeted Congress state president Kamal Nath. It has been decided to constitute a ‘gau cabinet’ for the protection and fostering of ‘godhan’ (cow and its progeny) in the state - Shivraj Singh Chouhan, MP Chief Minister Its candidate is also 94% effective in people over 65 years of age EXPRESS NEWS SERVICE @ New Delhi THE Corona vaccine world just got another shot of excitement as US-based pharma major Pfizer on Wednesday raised its candidate’s efficacy to 95%, up from 90% a week ago, as final results of its phase 3 trials across six countries came in. The other big takeaway was the vaccine’s 94% effectiveness in adults over 65 years, who are among the most vulnerable to the virus. Just a couple of days ago, its competitor Moder na had claimed 94.5% efficacy in its initial phase 3 results. Both biotech firms intend to seek emergency regulatory approval within days. The BNT162b2, the vaccine candidate Pfizer developed along with German partner BioNTech, was reported to be consistent in performance across age and ethnicity demographics without major side effects. A review of the reactogenicity data, which consisted of at least 8,000 participants in the phase 2/3 study, showed that the vaccine was well tolerated, Nothing much in it for India The vaccines of Pfizer and Moderna may have little implications for India, as storage and distribution could be a major constraint. In any case, most of the doses to be manufactured till next year by them have been booked by rich nations with most adverse events resolving shortly after vaccination, the statement added. The adverse effects included headaches and fatigue in about 2% of the volunteers. In all, the vaccine candidate was trialled on over 41,000 volunteers in the US, Germany, Turkey, South Africa, Brazil and Argentina. “The study re- CONGRESS IMPLOSION ADHIR’S TURN TO ATTACK SIBAL, SAYS HE’S FREE TO LEAVE who wrote to Congress chief Sonia Gandhi calling for a functional leadership. After THE infighting within the the Bihar debacle, he reiterCongress intensified on ated his demand for an introWednesday with the party’s spection on the party’s failleader in the Lok ure in elections after Sabha Adhir Ranelections. jan Chowdhury Sibal’s sharp comtelling dissenting ments triggered a leader Kapil Sibal to war of words among join another party if party leaders. he is not happy with While Congress the Congress. ChoudRajya Sabha MP hury also questioned Vivek Tankha agreed Sibal’s intentions in with Sibal and publicly targeting Instead of giving sought serious introthe Gandhis after sermons sitting s p e c t i o n , s e n i o r the party’s poor per- in AC rooms, he leader and Rajasformance in the Bi(Kapil Sibal) than Chief Minister should work on har elections. Ashok Gehlot said the ground. “Kapil Sibal could the comments were have raised the is- Lecturing others unwarranted and without doing sues inside a party would demoralise anything won’t forum instead of help. Only calling party workers. making such embar- for introspection Senior leader Salrassing remarks in man Khurshid, who without doing public. He is a senior anything on our is considered close leader and has ac- own is of no use to the Gandhi family , cess to the party’s also hit out at Sibal top brass. Those who are un- saying there is no point in happy with the functioning “aimless introspection” and of the party have the free- that leaders who bite nails dom to form a new party or when the party underperjoin one,” said Chowdhury . forms may have “no nails to Sibal was one of 23 leaders bite” for future. EXPRESS NEWS SERVICE @ New Delhi MIGRATION Poll list revision shows exodus continues from U’khand hills V I N E E T U PA D H YAY @ Dehradun MISSING NO MUSLIM FACE IN NITISH TEAM THIS TIME While the previous NDA government had Khursid Alam from JD-U, no Muslim candidate from the four parties comprising the ruling alliance has won the Bihar election this year PAGE 8 DESPITE the Uttarakhand government’s efforts, migration from the hill districts towards the plains and to other states continues. The latest revision in the voters’ list points to this disturbing trend. Of the total 29,050 new voters included in the electoral rolls in the state, 24,414, or about 84 per cent, are in the plains. Sowjanya, Chief Electoral Officer of Uttarakhand, said, “More than 84 per cent new voters are from Haridwar, Udhamsingh Nagar, Dehradun and Nainital districts.” Shekhar Pathak, a Padma Shri awardee activist, said, “The data is indicative of the fact that migration from the nine hill districts of Uttarakhand has not stopped. More efforts are needed to check migration from our hills.” Among the nine hill districts, except for Almora, the number of voters did not reach four digits in any of the districts while it was only 49 in Rudraprayag. The data by State Rural Development and Migration Commission, set up by Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat, points out a positive growth rate in the population of districts in the plains such as Dehradun, Udham Singh Nagar, Nainital and Haridwar while in the mountain districts like Pauri, Almora, Tehri, Chamoli, Rudraprayag and Pithoragarh, there has been a decline. The data, released in 2018, also points out that over 3.83 lakh people left their homes during 2007-17. Around 50% of them left in search of livelihood. Uttarakhand has around 16,500 villages, of which 734 have become ‘ghost villages’ with zero population. New voters in ‘plains’ districts New voters in ‘mountain’ districts Big divide Rudraprayag 49 Tehri Garhwal 534 Chamoli 220 Dehradun 6,357 Bageshwar 300 Pithoragarh 681 Haridwar 8,602 78,32,412 Total voters 29,050 New voters registered in last 9 months Almora 1,483 Pauri Garhwal 718 Champawat 420 Nainital 2,916 Udhamsingh Nagar 6,539 24,414: Voters registered in the plains 4,636 Voters registered in the hills sults mark an important step in this historic eight-month journey to bring forward a vaccine capable of helping to end this devastating pandemic. We continue to move at the speed of science to compile all the data collected thus far and share with regulators around the world,” said Albert Bourla, Pfizer Chairman and CEO. Global markets reacted positively though Pfizer-BioNTech , is yet to release detailed data on the study. Also, its results are yet to be analysed by independent experts. The troubling part of maintaining Pfizer’s vaccine at -700C to -800C continues, but the company said it was confident of using the cold-chain infrastructure to distribute the vaccine. Pfizer-BioNTech aim to produce up to 50 million doses in 2020 and 1.3 billion by 2021-end. In all, 170 confirmed cases of Covid were evaluated from the 28th day after the first shot of BNT162b2. Of them, 162 were in the placebo category while only eight were in the vaccinated group. Ten individuals went on to develop severe disease, nine of whom were in the non-vaccinated group. HUMANE ORDER HC directs admitting Varavara Rao at Nanavati EXPRESS NEWS SERVICE @ Mumbai THE Bombay High Court on Wednesday ordered the Maharashtra government to admit jailed octogenarian poet and activist Varavara Rao for treatment at the private superspecialty Nanavati hospital here at state expense. Rao was arrested in August 2018 in connection with an Elgar Parishad conclave in Pune in December 2017 that turned violent, and is lodged in Navi Mumbai’s Taloja Jail. A division bench comprising justices S S Shinde and Madhav Jamdar said, “Ultimately the man is on almost death bed. He needs some treatment. Can the state say no, we will treat him in Taloja? We are only saying transfer him to Nanavati for two w e e k s . We will further see after two weeks.” It also directed that family members of Rao should be allowed to meet him at the Nanavati hospital, and posted the matter for further hearing on December 3. The court was hearing two cases — a bail application filed by Rao on medical grounds and a writ petition by his wife Hemalata saying his incarceration was a violation of his right to health and life. Citing his medical history, senior advocate Indira Jaising said there was “reasonable apprehension that Rao may die in jail and not even stand trial in the Bhima Koregoan case”. On Tuesday, Jaising had trashed a medical report on Rao submitted by Nanavati hospital’s doctors. Despite his deteriorating condition due to neurological problems and urinary infection coupled with dementia, he was not examined by experts, she said.