Daily Current Affairs : 3rd and 4th January 2021

Daily Current Affairs for UPSC CSE

Topics Covered

  1. Tide–Rainfall Flood Quotient
  2. India and the race for vaccine development
  3. Culturing of the new coronavirus strain
  4. Dry Run of Vaccine
  5. Transfat
  6. Vaccine Approval
  7. Lithium Reserves
  8. Trade Deficit
  9. Facts for Prelims

1 . Tide–Rainfall Flood Quotient


Context : To understand if a coastal city is more prone to floods caused by tidal events or extreme rainfall, a team from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay devised a new metric or measure called the Tide–Rainfall Flood Quotient.

Background

he C40 Cities report of 2018 notes that by 2050, over 570 low-lying coastal cities will face projected sea level rise by at least 0.5 meters, putting over 800 million people at risk from the impacts of rising seas and storm surges. While the inland areas can be flooded due to the heavy rainfall, the coasts are threatened by the impact of tidal surges.

About the New metric

  • This framework uses past rainfall data, tidal data, and topography of the region to find out the main driver of the flooding events
  • “It is very important to understand the main driver of the flooding events for effective disaster management.

Importance

  • Metric can help disaster management experts in framing better flood risk management systems directed towards long term planning.
    • For storm-tide dominated regions, severe flood hazard can be alleviated by building coastal defence structures such as closure dams, tide breakers, and storm-surge barriers at appropriate locations.
    • The tide and surge forecasting systems in these regions should be equipped with state-of-the-art ocean circulation models.
    • On the other hand, for pluvial dominated regions, structural measures such as rainwater storage structures, lakes, and detention basins should be prioritised in the flood management plans,” according to the authors.

2 . India and the race for Vaccine Development


Context :

Advantages for India in Vaccine development and manufacturing

  • Advanced biotechnology laboratories and large-scale vaccine manufacturing facilities made India a front runner, if not the best bet, to win the vaccine race in the world outside of China.
  • Another advantages was Representation in two global initiatives– the Global Pandemic Preparedness Monitoring Board and Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, the latter advising the world to prepare for vaccine development.

Issues with India’s Vaccine Strategy

  • India’s vaccine manufacturing facilities are highly rated, globally. They have in-house research and development laboratories. However, they are concerned with research of a practical nature, for refining processes and products, rather than basic and fundamental research necessary for designing new vaccine candidates.
  • Universities and Institutes of technologies are where such new ideas are incubated. Commercial manufacturing facilities depend on profit for research funding. Universities and Institutes, funded by government and private philanthropic trusts, can pursue basic research without financial constraints. When confronted with urgent need for vaccines, the wise approach would have been to establish a platform to bring the two groups together for fast-tracking vaccine candidate designs, pre-clinical and clinical trials, and up-scaling manufacture of promising vaccines.
  • Unfortunately, during January through March there was no guidance or leadership from the Government of India for vaccine development. The expertise of the two global initiatives was not adapted for meeting India’s needs or for asserting India’s global leadership.

Missed opportunity

  • India had the unique opportunity not only to lead the world in vaccine development and supply, but also in designing a vaccination strategy and platform for rolling out vaccine to the public. India’s model would have been a guide not only for SAARC countries but also for many Asian and African countries with rather weak health management systems. That opportunity was entirely in the hands of the government. Utilising these two opportunities, India could have partly overcome the economic downturn due to the pandemic.

3 . Culturing of the new coronavirus strain


Context : India has successfully cultured the new coronavirus strain, which was first reported in the U.K., the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) said on Saturday.

About Culturing of strain

  • Culture is the process by which cells are grown under controlled conditions, generally outside their natural environment.
  • No country had yet reported successful isolation and culture of the new variant of SARS-CoV-2.
  • “The U.K.-variant of the virus, with all signature changes, is now successfully isolated and cultured at the National Institute of Virology (NIV) from the clinical specimens collected from U.K.-returnees,
  • The research body said vero cell lines were used by the scientists of ICMR-NIV to culture the U.K.-variant of the virus.

4 . Dry Run of Vaccine


Context : With two vaccine candidates — Covishield from the Pune-based Serum Institute of India and Covaxin of Bharat Biotech — at final stages of emergency use authorisation (EUA) in India, several States and Union Territories conducted a dry run for a COVID-19 vaccination programme. A Health Ministry release said this was organised in 125 districts spanning 285 locations. Four States — Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Gujarat and Punjab — had done a pilot dry run on December 28-29 and the Health Ministry said no major issues were observed in the operational aspects.

Background

  • Under India’s ‘Expanded Programme on Immunization’, which was initiated in 1978, the country has gathered experience in administering essential vaccines to children and pregnant women.
  • In 1985, the programme was renamed ‘Universal Immunisation Programme’, under which about 12 different vaccines are provided through the government health system.
  • Other than inoculation, there is a three-tier system at the district, State and national levels to monitor coverage and adverse events and to ensure that the vaccines adhere to quality norms.
  • Roughly 9 million immunisation sessions are conducted annually in India, according to the UNICEF. Despite that, only about 60% of eligible children are fully immunised, with wide variations among States.
  • Because a COVID-19 vaccine will involve two jabs spaced at least four weeks apart, and will need to be administered to potentially over a billion Indians, it requires more planning, personnel and logistical arrangements. India’s priority list of beneficiaries includes healthcare workers, municipal workers, police personnel, those over 50 years of age, and younger people with identified co-morbidities. This, the government has calculated, works out to 300 million people, and given the pace of vaccine production and administration, it will be August till all on the priority list are inoculated. With at least two vaccines on the EUA list, the whole exercise involves an unprecedented level of digitisation.

Purpose of Dry Run

  • Purpose of the dry run was to “assess operational feasibility of using [the] Co-WIN application in [a] field environment, to test the linkages between planning, implementation and to identify the challenges and guide [the] way forward prior to actual implementation.
  • This is also expected to give confidence to programme managers at various levels”.

How was it organised?

  • The dry run was carried out in one or two districts of the States and sessions were organised at district hospitals or medical colleges, community or primary healthcare centres, private health facilities, and at outreach sites in urban and rural areas.
  • The dry run tested all the key steps in the COVID-19 vaccination process in a field environment. The programme involved State administrators generating a ‘user ID’. These ‘IDs’ were sent as a phone message to 25 volunteers at each session site. There are five such sites in each district.
  • Each site is manned by a medical officer, who is entrusted with ensuring that these groups of 25 people are inoculated.
  • Though no actual shots were administered, details of every person who is to get the jab are being punched into the Co-WIN application, which is part of the database that will keep track of every inoculation.
  • The dry run involved dummy boxes of vaccines being brought to the centre; cold storage points were also checked to ensure coordination with the actual points of vaccine delivery. Once the session was completed, all data and feedback were relayed back to district, State, and eventually Central centres for feedback and analysis.
  • The exercise began earlier this week in Assam, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat and Punjab. States have already prepared lists of priority groups — healthcare workers, municipal workers, and Army and police personnel — and beneficiaries who had registered themselves on the Co-WIN app were sent SMSs informing them about the time and place of their “COVID-19 vaccination” as a mock drill.

5 . Transfat


Context : The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) has capped the amount of trans fatty acids (TFA) in oils and fats to 3% for 2021 and 2% by 2022 from the current permissible limit of 5% through an amendment to the Food Safety and Standards (Prohibition and Restriction on Sales) Regulations.

About Transfats

  • Trans fats are a form of unsaturated fat associated with a number of negative health effects. Trans fat can be found naturally as well as artificially.
  • Natural, or ruminant, trans fats occur in the meat and dairy from ruminant animals, such as cattle, sheep, and goats. They form naturally when bacteria in these animals’ stomachs digest grass.
  • However, artificial trans fats — otherwise known as industrial trans fats or partially hydrogenated fats — are hazardous to your health. These fats occur when vegetable oils are chemically altered to stay solid at room temperature, which gives them a much longer shelf life
  • Trans fats are associated with increased risk of heart attacks and death from coronary heart disease. As per the World Health Organisation (WHO), approximately 5.4 lakh deaths take place each year globally because of intake of industrially produced trans fatty acids. The WHO has also called for global elimination of trans fats by 2023.

About the News

  • The revised regulation applies to edible refined oils, vanaspati (partially hydrogenated oils), margarine, bakery shortenings, and other mediums of cooking such as vegetable fat spreads and mixed fat spreads.
  • While the regulation comes into effect immediately, industry players were made to take a pledge back in 2018 that they would comply with WHO’s call for action to reduce TFA by 3% by 2021 allowing them three years to comply with the latest regulation.
  • It was in 2011 that India first passed a regulation that set a TFA limit of 10% in oils and fats, which was further reduced to 5% in 2015.

6 . Vaccine Approval


Context : Vaccines by Bharat Biotech and Serum Institute of India (SII) were formally approved by the Central Drugs and Standards Committee (CDSCO) on Sunday.

About the News

  • Approval allows the vaccines — Covishield from SII and based on the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine, and Covaxin from by Bharat Biotech to be offered to healthcare workers and frontline workers in India.
  • 3 crore such personnel, considered at highest risk for COVID-19, will be given the vaccine for free.

Issues in approval

  • Neither Covishield nor Covaxin has completed a crucial phase-3 trial, under which a vaccine candidate is administered to volunteers at multiple locations across the country, in India.
  • The CDSCO approval was based on a recommendation by a Subject Expert Committee of technical experts who deliberated for two days in sessions lasting over 12 hours on approvals to the two vaccines.
  • A press statement by the Health Ministry said the vaccine’s efficacy in Indian volunteers was “comparable” to that tested in overseas trials.
  • Both the approvals accorded are for “restricted use in emergency situation” and in the case of Bharat Biotech the approval wording notes it is in “..public interest as an abundant precaution, in clinical trial mode, to have more options for vaccinations, especially in case of infection by mutant strains.
  • Bharat Biotech whose vaccine candidate was being tested in large phase-3 efficacy trial in India, has provided safety and immunogenicity data — proof that the inoculation doesn’t harm and is capable of stimulating an immune response in the body — but no efficacy data, that shows the vaccine achieves its primarily goal of protecting against disease. Doing such a trial would have, according to the company’s timeline, taken some more months.

Difference between Vaccines


7 . Lithium Reserves


Context : With eye on China, India looks at lithium reserves in Argentina, Chile and Bolivia

Background

  • Currently, India is heavily dependent on import of these cells and the move to ink sourcing pacts for lithium is seen as another salvo in the front against China, a key source of both the raw material and cells.

Khanij Bidesh India Ltd

  • India through a newly-floated state-owned company, inked a pact with an Argentine firm mid-last year to jointly prospect lithium in the South American country that has the third largest reserves of the silver-white alkali metal — a crucial building block of the lithium-ion rechargeable batteries that power electric vehicles (EVs), laptops and mobile phones.
  • The new company, Khanij Bidesh India Ltd was incorporated in August, 2019 by three state-owned companies, NALCO, Hindustan Copper and Mineral Exploration Ltd, with a specific mandate to acquire strategic mineral assets such as lithium and cobalt abroad
  • Company is also exploring options in Chile and Bolivia, two other top lithium-producing countries.

Importance

  • India is heavily dependent on import of these cells and the move to ink sourcing pacts for lithium is seen as another salvo in the front against China, a key source of both the raw material and cells.
  • India is seen as a late mover as it attempts to enter the lithium value chain, coming at a time when EVs are predicted to be a sector ripe for disruption. And 2021 is likely to be an inflection point for battery technology, with several potential improvements to the Li-ion technology, and alternatives to this tried-and-tested formulation, under advanced stages of commercialisation.
  • The most promising are solid-state batteries that use alternatives to aqueous electrolyte solutions — an innovation that could lower the risk of fires, sharply increase energy density and potentially take only 10 minutes to charge an EV, cutting the recharging time by two-thirds.
  • These cells can extend the driving distance of a compact electric vehicle while maintaining legroom — a quantum leap in battery tech.

Challenges

  • Despite the improvements in lithium-ion batteries over the last decade, long charging times and weak energy density are still barriers. While the Li-ion batteries are seen as sufficiently efficient for applications such as phones and laptops, in case of EVs, these cells still lack the range that would make them a viable alternative to internal combustion engines. A number of alternatives are being fostered to achieve more optimal options.

8 . Trade Deficit


Context : Contracting for the third straight month, India’s exports slipped marginally by 0.8% in December 2020 even as the trade deficit widened to $15.71 billion due to the rise in imports.

What is trade deficit?

  • Simply put, the trade “balance” of a country shows the difference between what it earns from its exports and what it pays for its imports. If this number is in negative – that is, the total value of goods imported by a country is more than the total value of goods exported by that country – then it is referred to as a “trade deficit”.

What does a trade deficit signify?

  • A trade deficit means broadly can mean two things.
    • One, that the demand in the domestic economy is not being met by the domestic producers. For instance, India may be producing a lot of milk but still not enough for the total milk demand in the country. As such, India may choose to import milk.
    • Two, many a time a deficit signifies the lack of competitiveness of the domestic industry. For instance, Indian car manufacturers could import steel from China instead of procuring it from the domestic producers if the Chinese steel was decidedly cheaper, for the same quality.
  • More often than not, the trade deficit of a country is due to a combination of both these main factors.

Is a trade deficit a bad thing?

  • No trade is ever balanced. That’s because all countries have different strengths and weaknesses. India may have a trade deficit with China but a surplus with Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. It all depends on whether a country is playing to its strength or not.
  • Trade typically enhances wellbeing all across the world by forcing countries to do what they can do most efficiently and procure (import) from the rest of the world what they cannot produce efficiently. It is important to note that China is not selling milk and New Zealand is not attempting to sell steel to the rest of the world.
  • Another way to look at trade deficits is to look at the outcome of trade agreements on consumers instead of producers. For instance, if cheaper and better quality milk or steel was to come into India, Indian consumers would benefit as their health improves and their cars become more affordable. Of course, Indian producers of steel and milk will cry foul but then if they are not efficient, they should be producing something else.

9 . Facts for Prelims


Deepor Beel

  •  Deepor Beel is a wetland on the south-western edge of Guwahati and Assam’s only Ramsar site.
  • Deepor Beel was designated a Ramsar site in 2002 for sustaining a range of aquatic life forms besides 219 species of birds.
  • A Ramsar site is a wetland designated to be of international importance under the Convention on Wetlands on February 2, 1971, in the Iranian city of Ramsar.
  • The area of the wetland was about 6,000 hectares in the late 1980s. Satellite imagery has revealed that its area has shrunk by at least 35% since 1991. “One of the reasons is that it is losing connectivity with small rivers such as Kalmoni, Khonajan and Basistha that used to flow via the Mora Bharalu channel through Guwahati,
  • Expansion of the city, encroachment upon the natural channels through Guwahati and from the hills around, and a municipal waste dump at Boragaon almost on the edge of the wetland were the other factors

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