My Science Space

It's been over two years now that #COVID has drenched us all from head to toe. Display of information across social media platforms or news channels played a crucial role in guiding people from time to time. Google's search tool, during this outbreak, transformed into a gigantic tool to fetch out relevant, timely and authentic information.  Before punching down itself completely, as experts say, this virus #SARS-CoV-02 will still rule in our lives for at least 2-3 years, though not aggressively.  And thus, it becomes imperative to keep ourselves updated with all the tools we have in-place and in-action.  These updates are crucial and must be enacted in time to produce a solid ground for people, who are looking for information related to vaccines, vaccine centers/PHCs, availability of booster shots, side-effects of vaccines and its treatment, testing centers, and many such relevant topics.  Google can enhance its COVID-info-wall with the following inclusions: 1. A ...

The newly circulating COVID-19 variant –‘Omicron’ is clamping up the chart at an aggressive rate just in few days or a couple of weeks. Having detected initially in South Africa and Botswana, it has spread to a wider extent across the globe, infecting larger people and the numbers are multiplying quickly without showing mercy to any of the groups out there- seniors or juniors. As per the current data available on WHO’s site, Omicron is taking over Delta in many parts of the world and its statistics are changing each day. Dr Maria Van Kerkhove, COVID-19 Technical lead, WHO Health Emergencies Programme has tried to explain the behaviour and patterns of this newly detected mutant worldwide. What do we know about Omicron as the new COVID variant? "Omicron is the latest variant of concern that WHO is tracking, has been detected around the world. It is efficiently transmitting. And in fact everywhere where we have good sequencing, this variant is being detected, so it is circulating g...

Having first reported to the World Health Organisation from South Africa on 24 th of November 2021, the newly circulating mutant ‘ Omicron’ or ‘B.1.1.529 ’ is becoming a cause of public health concern to the entire world. The first case of infection was confirmed from a specimen collected in the second week of November. The WHO’s independent group of experts (the Technical Advisory Group on SARS-CoV-2 virus Evolution/TAG-VE) assessed the potential impact of SARS-CoV-2 variant ‘B.1.1.529’ during a convention organised on 26 th of November. According to TAG-VE, the variant has a large number of mutations, some of which are becoming the reason of concern. The number of cases are apparently increasing day-by-day in almost all province regions of South Africa. Just on Sunday, the number of cases reported were 2800, much higher than the cases reported on a daily basis. Researchers all across the world including South Africa are conducting studies on this variant to have a better underst...

Aiming to achieve the positioned target to vaccinate 40 percent of the population of every country by the end of 2021 and 70 percent by mid of 2022, the United Nations and its Global Health agency- WHO (World Health Organisation) released a comprehensive hands-on strategic guidebook- ' Strategy to Achieve Global Covid-19 Vaccination by mid-2022 ' to get Global Covid-19 vaccination by next mid-summer.  The current pandemic has divided the world in a two-track pandemic:  people in poorer countries continue to be at risk while those in richer countries with high vaccination rates enjoy much greater protection forming a massive gap over vaccine inequity and unjust distribution. More than 6.4 billion vaccine doses have now been administered globally, and almost one-third of the world’s population is fully vaccinated against COVID-19. But those numbers mask a horrifying inequity. Low-income countries have received less than half of one percent of the world’s vaccines. In Africa, les...

The global health agency, WHO with a group of health leaders urged for a global cooperation to accomplish the ascertained goals of COVID-pandemic related health emergency and for an equitable distribution of vaccines to the deprived or lower/middle income nations and Africa. An extensive call was made under the leadership of WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus joined by Dr Seth Berkley, CEO Gavi, Strive Masiyima, AU Special Envoy for COVID- 19, Dr John Nkengasong, Africa CDC Director, Professor Benedict Oramah, President and Chairman of the Board of Directors, Afreximbank, Dr Vera Songwe, UN Under- Secretary- General and Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission For Africa and Dr Matshidiso Moeti, WHO Regional Director for Africa during a media briefing at WHO’s headquarter in Geneva on 14 th September 2021. Taking a dig at the current health emergency, Dr. Tedros stated, “More than 5.7 billion doses have been administered globally, but only 2% of those have been...

The World Health Organisation in collaboration with the German government launched a hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence in Berlin to provide the world with better data, analytics and decisions to detect and respond to health emergencies. H.E German Federal Chancellor Dr. Angela Merkel and WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus inaugurated the hub in the presence of other German Federal ministers- HE German Federal Minister of Health Jens Spahn, Governing Mayor of Berlin H.E. Michael Müller, and other dignitaries such as Dr. Michael J. Ryan, Executive Director WHO Health Emergencies Programme, Fabiola Gianotti, CERN Director-General; Katalin Karikó, BioNTech Senior Vice President, Sabine Gabrysch, Professor for Climate Change and Health, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin; Chikwe Ihekweazu, Director-General, Centre for Disease Control, Nigeria. The 1 st of September 2021 marked itself as one of the most quin...

The World Health Organisation released a two-new companion reports impending the first global recommendations to fortify human genome editing mechanism with safety, effectiveness and ethics for its proper use in public health practices. The forward-looking new reports result from the first broad, global consultation that spanned over two years, involving hundreds of participants representing diverse perspectives from around the world, including scientists and pioneering researchers, patient groups, faith leaders and indigenous peoples to draw a comprehensive and inclusive approach over the ethical and clean practices of human genome editing in the underlying areas of somatic, germline and heritable tissues. “Human genome editing has the potential to advance our ability to treat and cure disease, but the full impact will only be realized if we deploy it for the benefit of all people, instead of fuelling more health inequity between and within countries,” stated  Dr. Tedros A...