The Revision Channel

 Full form of INSACOG -  Indian SARS-COV2 Consortium on Genomics What is it?  A consortium of 28 national laboratories.  INSACOG is a multi-laboratory, multi-agency, Pan-India network to monitor genomic variations in the SARS-CoV-2 by a sentinel sequencing effort.  The network carries out whole genome sequencing of SARS-CoV-2 virus across the nation, aiding the understanding of how the virus spreads and evolves, and provide information to aid public health response. Who is incharge?  Department of Biotechnology, Ministry of Science and Technology  Jointly Established by - MoH&FW, DBT, CSIR, ICMR Aim/Purpose of INSACOG -  To assess SARS-COV2  To do Genomic surveillance, epidemiological surveillance and clinical correlation  Understand how the virus spreads and evolves, and provide information to aid public health response/preparedness To understand the disease dynamics and severity Understand if local outbreaks are caused by transmission of single or multiple viral lineages To stren

  The world is stuck with a pandemic that started two years ago. Just when we thought that it was nearing the end, with the advent of vaccines, another wave has hit us. We don't see major lockdowns now because economies cannot afford another one, but, the disease is spreading like wildfire with more than million cases a day and thousands of deaths across the world, thanks to the new variants.  Omicron is the latest threat. We got lucky this time because it isn't as severe as the other variants but its infection rate is four times faster than that of the original n-CoV, and two times faster than that of the Delta variant. However this might not be the case for future variants. New variants that emerge might get weaker and affect lives less, or it can get stronger and bypass our immunity to infect us badly.  With new variants emerging time and again, when is this pandemic going to end? Will life become normal again?  coronavirus - from WHO website These questions are the biggest

  What is a 'bad bank'? It is a financial entity set up to acquire NPAs from banks & resolve them The bank, which sells the stressed assets to the bad banks, is now relieved of the burden of the bad loans & can instead focus on growing its business by advancing fresh loans to borrowers requiring credit A bad bank is also called NARCL = National Asset Reconstruction Company Ltd. Is bad banks the way forward for improving banking sector in India? Yes, if they combine recapitalisation with asset segregation then bad bank segregations are effective in cleaning up balance sheets & promoting bank lending, according to Jan 2020 BIS working paper (BIS = Bank for International Settlements) Critics of bad banks government's role in guaranteeing some part of NPAs could lead to laxity on the part of bankers in assessing risk & thus creating fresh dodgy loans How will NARCL operate? the bad bank will acquire assets by making an offer to the lead bank of a group of lender

E stimating the excess deaths To get the number of deaths from all causes in a defined time period and compare it with the same time period of the previous years. (Time period = specific months or a year) "Excess" death are all deaths beyond what is considered "normal" for that area and time; during a disaster(pandemic-covid) excess deaths are attributed to direct/indirect causes of the disaster It is an indirect approach  The difference between actual mortality rate and the expected death rate gives an estimate of the Covid toll Causes of deaths when 'excess deaths' were estimated were - Deaths due to Covid infections Deaths due to delayed or deferred healthcare Mental health disorders, alcohol/drug use Fatalities among chronically ills with cardiovascular or respiratory ailments who succumbed to Covid instead of their other chronic medical conditions Lower fatalities due to accidents (as a result of lockdowns - not many people went out) Lower fatalities du