Banladesh:Relocated Rohingya refugees protest before UNHCR team

Director General of Indian Council of Medical Research Prof. Balram Bhargava has said that lock down must be lifted in a gradual manner wherein the positivity rate has come down. He said, the country is moving in a right direction as the containment measures have worked well to bring down the COVID cases in the country.Briefing the media in New Delhi on Tuesday Bhargava has said, reopening should be based on three pillar like low test positivity rate, vaccination of vulnerable population and community ownership of COVID-19 Appropriate Behavior. Prof. Bhargava expressed hope that the entire population of the country will be vaccinated by the end of December this year. He said, India is one of the five countries in the world, which is producing indigenous vaccine. He said, there is no shortage of vaccine in the country.

-Guwahati Central Jail has become the first jail of Assam to administer the first dose of COVID vaccination to all inmates. Official sources said that one thousand 121 inmates have been vaccinated. On the other hand, 38 jail inmates were found COVID -19 positive but 18 of them have recovered. There are 31 jails in Assam.  Nagaland on Tuesday registered its single highest COVID-19 recoveries after 373 patients recovered from the infection. These improve the state recovered cases to 16,111.State Health Minister S Pangnyu Phom in a tweet informed that Kohima has registered maximum 208 recovered cases. The state reported 174 fresh cases of COVID-19 today, taking the caseload to 21854. The maximum number of 58 new cases were reported from Dimapur. As many as nine deaths related to COVID-19 were also recorded in the same period which has furthered the toll to 372. The number of active cases now stands at 4,725.

-Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray on Tuesday gave his nod to a notification to fix the price in private hospitals treating COVID-19 patients. Taking cognisance of the exorbitant fees charged by private hospitals to treat Corona patients, the State Government has done categorisation of cities by fixing the treatment cost. This has comes as a big relief to common man especially those in rural areas who are being charged huge sum of rupees by private hospitals for COVID-19 treatment. Hospitals cannot charge above the fixed rate. Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar and Health Minister Rajesh Tope had received a number of complaints over exorbitant fees charged by private hospitals in treating COVID-19 patients. The earlier notification had uniform rates for Covid treatment in cities as well as for remote areas. However now with categorisation of cities into 'A', 'B' and 'C' category there will be difference in rates. The notification says that it will be mandatory for hospitals to provide pre-audited bill to the patients. Further, the notification also has a provision of a visit by flying squad to conduct scrutiny of the rates being charged by private hospitals.

-In Bangladesh, a large number of Rohingya refugees relocated at the newly emerged island of Bhashan Char protested against their living conditions at the facility before the visiting team of UNHCR officials on Monday. AFP quoted the local police Chief that the Rohingya became unruly immediately after the UNHCR representatives arrived on the island. They threw rocks and broke the glass of the warehouse, said the police official. Police used batons to disperse the protestors in which several protesters were injured, reports AFP. The UNHCR expressed deep concern over the incident in which refugees were injured at the Bhashan Char island. Close to 18,000 Rohingya refugees have been relocated to the newly developed facility at Bhashan Char from the overcrowded refugee camp of Cox’s Bazar. Bangladesh hosts over 1 million Rohingya refugees who fled the army crackdown from the Rakhine province of Myanmar in 2017. Bangladesh government developed the facility at Bhashan Char island at a cost of over 31,00 crore Taka with a capacity to accommodate over 1 lakh refugees.

-China has jailed a popular internet blogger Qiu Ziming for his online comments made in February about Chinese soldiers who died in a border clash with Indian soldiers at Galwan Valley in June last year. Qiu Ziming aged 38 years, with over 2.5 million followers on China's twitter-like Weibo was handed over an eight-month jail sentence by a court in Nanjing in eastern China’s Jiangsu province. He was found guilty of "slandering heroes and martyrs".According to state media, he is the first person to be jailed under a new provision of China's criminal law that bans the "defamation of martyrs and heroes". “Qiu, known as ‘Labixiaoqiu’ online, was also ordered to publicly apologize through major domestic portals and the national media within 10 days to eliminate the negative impact, the court ruled,” as per state-run tabloid.