Coronavirus: Thinking Out of the Box

 

20 Coronavirus Vaccines in Development say top World Health Organization (WHO), Officials – 

With one of the vaccines already being tested on a number of American volunteers in Seattle, WHO is currently working with scientists from all over the world to work and deliver 20 different vaccines. 

Although there are still a number of financial and logistical hurdles that they will have to cross to get the vaccine to the common man, it is commendable how vaccines are already in development within 60 days of the genetic code of the virus being broken, this further instils great faith in the researchers and scientists working around the clock to provide a vaccine against COVID-19. 

 

100,000 People Have Recovered From the Virus Worldwide 

With an increase in the number of potential treatments, the number of fully recovered patients has reached 100,000 and will only increase further according to this research by Johns Hopkins University. 

Patients across demographics are recovering from the virus with the oldest being Jack Bowden, the 98 year Second World War Veteran who worked on the vital production of Penicillin, recovered within less than a week after being diagnosed. 

This is along the lines of which Nobel Laureate and Stanford biophysicist Michael Levitt had spoken to Los Angeles Times about in his interview, in which he told the news outlet “What we need is to control the panic”, “We’re going to be fine”. 

 

All 16 Temporary Coronavirus Hospital in Wuhan Closed 

With the final group of 49 patients walking out of the Wuchang temporary hospital in the capital of Hubei province, according to the Xinhua news agency, the last two of the sixteen temporary hospitals in the epicentre city of Wuhan have been shut down. 

This is a sign of how things are drastically changing in the epicenter city of Wuhan, a city of 11 million which has been shut off from the rest of the world since the middle of January. Officials have stated that anyone who has a “Green” code on the widely used smartphone health app will be allowed to leave the city from 8 April. 

 

Coursera Comes to aid of COVID-19 Impacted Universities 

Online education giant Coursera has Opened “Coursera for campus” globally at no cost to any university or college which has been affected by COVID-19. The program offers 3,8000 courses and 400 specializations and up to 5000 licenses for enrolled students at impacted organizations amongst many other perks, more details about which can be found here. 

Coursera by this is offering quick solutions to Universities so that there is no lapse of education for their students, through multi-language and mobile device integration along with curated custom content and bite-sized videos by renowned professors  which also include applied projects, interactive quizzes and peer-reviewed assignments amongst others. 

 

IILM University tackling COVID-19 

The Institute for Integrated Learning in Management located in Gurugram, one of India’s  Premier Liberal Education universities became one of the first institutions to take its Counselling, Interviews Online via Zoom, Skype or WhatsApp. 

The university has also shifted it’s classes to an online medium, along with with the learning management system and Mentee-Mentor Program, while doing this the university has secured the safety of the faculty/staff as they are now working remotely. 

 

IIT Delhi prepares Hand Sanitizers to Tackle Shortage 

Seeing the increase in the demand in hand sanitizers and the inevitable shortage in the supply chain, The Department of Chemistry at Indian Institute of Technology Delhi has prepared alcohol-based hand sanitizer along the guidelines given by the World Health Organization, the solution consists of ~75% Isopropyl alcohol along with 3 major components. 

This action in these unprecedented times will definitely go a long way in the battle against COVID-19. 

 

Flexi-5 Initiative launched by IIIT- H and TalentSprint 

International Institute of Information Technology – Hyderabad along with TalentSprint has come out with a Flexi-5 initiative aimed at supporting the participants of their upcoming Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning Program. This initiative allows the participant the option of attending interactive sessions online from their home and attending in-person class when the lockdown is relaxed, while also offering participants the option of repeating classes, reduced EMIs among many others. 

For more information. Click here. 

 

COVID-19 spread to be slowed down in Warm, Humid climate : MIT Study 

Analysis of COVID-19 Infection data from across the world until 22nd march, two researchers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), have shown that there is a direct correlation between temperature and absolute humidity with the spread of the virus. 

COVID-19 is caused by the SARS-Cov- 2 virus, which is closely related to the SARS-COV virus that caused the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Outbreak in 2003, SARS has been shown to lose its virility and surviving capabilities at higher temperatures. 

The MIT Study is one of the first ones to suggest that there is a direct correlation with the absolute humidity (a measure of water vapour per square metre of the area), this also implies that more humid countries will have higher absolute humidity. 

This study also implies that the Asian Countries experiencing monsoon may see a slowdown in the transmission of the virus, which comes as a welcome relief to the Sub-Continent where already 10 people have lost their lives to the virus. 

Jameel, one of the author’s of the paper, has stated that though there is a possibility that with monsoon the spread of the Virus might slow down, it is still too early for governmental bodies to rely on this information blindly. They further emphasised on effective public health interventions to be implemented across the world to slow down the spread of COVID-19 

 

IIT Kanpur developing low cost portable ventilators

In an effort to support the medical infrastructure, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur, is developing portable ventilators at a cost of Rs. 70,000 which are significantly cheaper than the invasive ventilators available currently at around Rs. 4 lakh per unit. 

The significant difference in the cost is not due to a dip in the quality of the product but is because of the fact that the components for the unit will be sourced locally. 

IIT, Kanpur has formed a nine-member team, including doctors from the Narayana Institute of Cardiac Sciences (NICS), Bangalore to produce the prototype after which they will be able to produce 1000 portable ventilators ready within a month. 

 

Taking care of Mental Health in a tate of Shutdown, an effort by the Peer Support Committee at Op Jindal Global University

As the entire student body is now at home, the Peer Support Committee at Op Jindal Global University has reiterated that as part of JGU’s collaboration with YourDOST members of the student body can access the mental healthcare services offered by the said platform online and for free.

 The platform further offers personal audio/video sessions with experts while giving students an option of choosing to stay anonymous, and also the right to choose the expert of their choice based on the expert’s profile, work experience and their available time slots. 

This is a welcoming initiative taken by JGU In these unprecedented times.