EPFO adds over 10 lakh net subscribers in August 2020

Labour and Employment Ministry has said that Employees' Provident Fund Organization,  EPFO has added over 10 lakh net subscribers in August this year.The Ministry said, the provisional payroll data published by EPFO today has revealed that the subscriber base of EPFO increased by around 20 lakh during the first five months of this fiscal.The Ministry said, during July 2020 around 7.49 lakh net new subscribers were added which is approximately 64 per cent of the net additions made during the corresponding month of previous year.The Ministry said, Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdown across the country had adversely affected the enrollments during the first quarter of the current financial year.However, the provisional payroll figures for the month of July and August 2020 are indicative of the slow dissipation of the negative impact of the COVID-19 and gradual recovery to pre-Covid levels.

-In Telangana, heavy spells of rainfall were recorded at several places in and around Hyderabad even as the normal life is yet to be restored from the last week’s devastating heavy downpour. Several colonies remained inundated following spells of heavy rain last week. Again, rain lashed several parts of the city on Tuesday under the influence of Low Pressure area developed in the Bay of Bengal and an upper air trough. Met officials warned that heavy to very heavy rain is likely to occur at Central and Southern parts of Telangana state. They also forecast heavy to very heavy rain for two more days.Meanwhile, the state Government has announced Rs. 10 thousand  of immediate assistance to the poor families, those affected due to rain and flooding. It is expected that over 3 lakh affected families will get the assistance. Meanwhile, the Disaster Response Teams of the GHMC are carrying out the relief works. Other state governments including Tamil Nadu and Delhi besides several film industry celebrities are generously making contributions to the CM relief fund to carry out relief works in Hyderabad and other parts of the state. Hyderabadis did not get respite from the vows even after a week that the torrential rains ravaged the city like never before.Thousands of people continue to live in the relief camps as the flood water yet to recede. The state government began distributing Rs. 10 thousand of relief each to the poor flood hit households.

-In Karnataka, all the parameters related to Covid 19 are showing improvement over previous months. The Covid Recovery rate has gone up to 84.8 percent, the case fatality rate has gone down to 1.4 percent and the positivity rate in the last three days stands at 7.8 percent.The Recovery rate is above 90 percent in 17 out of 30 districts. The days taken for the Covid cases to double has also shown improvement as it stands at 44 days now. In terms of testing too, the state is conducting 15591 tests per million populations.The Case fatality rate has reduced in 13 districts, the Positivity rate is better in 28 districts except Udupi and Kodagu.The state is also imposing fines for not wearing masks properly and for violating the social distancing norms.There were 91,049 such violations reported in the state. The war room data says that most of the Covid cases are detected among people between the age group of 21 and 40. But the number of deaths is more among the age group of 51 and above.

-India is looking at vaccinating about 30 million people, including healthcare specialists, who are on the frontline of the fight against the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) in the first phase once protection against the viral disease becomes available, Union health ministry officials said on Tuesday. This include 7 million doctors and paramedics, in addition to 20 million other frontline health workers, he country has the infrastructure already in place to vaccinate the 30 million,  health seceretary Rajesh Bhushan said. “We have the cold chain, vials, syringes and everything, he added. ndia has been running a successful Universal Immunisation Programme for the past 50 years, vaccinating about 25 million children and adults each year. “As a result we have more than 28,000 cold storages already existing across the country that are used to store several vaccines administered under the programme. All these facilities have temperature trackers that help upload information in real-time on our centralized server,” said Bhushan.

-Over 23% of Mumbai’s total Covid-19 patients are senior citizens above the age of 60, while 5% are children and teens, data from Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) revealed. The bulk of Mumbai’s Covid-19 patients are in the age group of 50 to 59 years (45,779 cases), followed by 30 to 39 years (42,433 cases), and 40 to 49 years (42,345 cases). These form 53% of Mumbai’s total Covid-19 cases which stood at 241,939, as of October 18. Though cases among senior citizens are relatively fewer than in the working age group, the fatality rate is the highest in the age group of 70 to 79 years, which recorded 2,181 deaths of the total 17,009 cases, with a case fatality rate of 12.8%. This is followed by patients in 60 to 69 age group, which recorded 2,789 deaths in 32,483 cases, with a case fatality rate of 8.5%. The age group of 50 to 59 years has recorded 2,217 deaths of 45,779 cases, and a case fatality rate of 4.8%.