Srinagar: A 27-year-old man from Lolab area of north Kashmir’s Baramulla was confirmed on Tuesday to have died of covid-19 at a hospital here, becoming the youngest victim of the dreaded disease in Jammu and Kashmir so far. His death has also taken the death toll due to the infection in the J&K to 33.
“He was admitted in SMHS Hospital Srinagar on June 1 with bilateral pneumonia with acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) and died within an hour of admission,” Dr. Salim Khan, nodal officer for COVID-19 at the Government Medical College Srinagar, told GNS.
“He tested positive for SARS CoV-2 (COVID) today,” Dr Salim added. earlier, the youngest victim was a 29-year old woman from Fateh kadal Srinagar who died at CD Hospital on May 18 last after battling for life for many days.
The 27-year-old’s death was the second fatality in Kashmir Valley on Tuesday due to the covid-19 as test reports of an elderly woman from Baramulla returned positive, a day after her death. A resident of Khanpora Baramulla , she was the mother-in-law of a 55-year-old man from same area who died last week.
With the latest fatality, the death toll due to the virus in J&K has gone upto 33. So far Srinagar district has highest number of the fatalities—7 followed Baramulla with six deaths, Anantnag five, Kulgam four, two each from Shopian, Budgam and Jammu while one death each has been reported from Bandipora, Kupwara Doda and Udhampur. (GNS)
Baramulla: An 80 year old woman from Baramulla who died of multiple ailments have been tested positive for Covid-19 infection.
With the death of this elderly woman that death toll due to this lethal infection has reached 32. Among these 28 are from Kashmir.
Chief Medical Officer Baramulla while confirming the death of 80 year old woman said that she hails from Khanpora Baramulla and was suffering from multiple ailments from past several years.
“After her death she was found positive for Covid-19. All he family members have been quarantined,” she said. (KNT)
Online travel firm MakeMyTrip has laid off 350 employees due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on its business.
Most of the fired employees are in international holidays and related line of business, according to sources.
In an email to employees, MakeMyTrip Group Executive Chairman and founder Deep Kalra and Group CEO Rajesh Magow said even as times remain unpredictable, what is evident is that the impact of COVID-19 crisis is going to be long drawn for the company.
It is unclear when travelling will become a way of life, as it was pre-COVID, they added.
“Over the past two months, we have analysed the impact closely and have spent considerable time thinking about the path to business recovery. As a result, it’s become agonisingly clear that there are certain lines of business that are far deeply affected and will take much longer than the others to recover,” they said.
It is evident that the pandemic has changed the context and viability of some of business lines in its current form, the mail said.
“Keeping this in mind we have had to take this sad but inevitable decision of rightsizing our workforce in these businesses,” Kalra and Magow said.
Mediclaim coverage
When asked about the number of employees that have been impacted, a company spokesperson confirmed that 350 employees have been impacted.
“To compassionately take care of the employees who have been impacted, we have tried to do our best to offer support including Mediclaim coverage for individuals and their families till the end of the year, leave encashment, gratuity, retaining the right to exercise part of RSUs as applicable, retention of company laptops and outplacement support apart from salary payments as per their notice periods,” they said.
Kalra and Magow also said that it was undoubtedly the toughest decision, “we have had to take so far and it’s the saddest day for us as an organisation”.
Srinagar: After hundreds hit by Covid-19 pandemic across J&K, a top leadership of the Kashmir’s healthcare set-up as a leading Pulmonologist tested positive for Covid-19, officials confirmed on Tuesday.
Sources told KNS that the swab sample of the doctor was taken on Monday afternoon and it returned positive late last night.
They said since mid of March this year, the toll has crossed the mark of 2600 with 31 deaths including 27 from Valley while 4 from Jammu region.
Earlier a dentist posted at GMC Srinagar tested positive for the virus. (KNS)
Pulwama: Two militants were killed in a gunfight with forces at Saimoh in Tral belt of South Kashmir’s Pulwama district on Tuesday morning.
A police official told news agency—Kashmir News Observer (KNO) that two militants were killed in the gunfight which broke out this morning .
The operation began after a joint team of Awantipora Police, Army’s 42 RR and CRPF launched a cordon and search operation after getting specific information about presence of militants in the area.
Meanwhile, authorities have snapped internet in the area—(KNO)
Washington, United States: Police fired tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse peaceful demonstrators near the White House on Monday as US President Donald Trump vowed a massive show of force to end violent protests over the death of a black man in police custody.
Police fired tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse peaceful demonstrators near the White House.
Reuters photographer Jonathan Ernst said law enforcement including officers on horseback moved on protesters in Lafayette Park, across the street from the White House.
At nearly the same moment, Trump spoke in the Rose Garden and vowed to end unrest in major cities across the nation “now,” saying that he would deploy the military if state governors refused to call out the National Guard. “Mayors and governors must establish an overwhelming law enforcement presence until the violence has been quelled,” Trump said. “If a city or state refuses to take the actions that are necessary to defend the life and property of their residents, then I will deploy the United States military and quickly solve the problem for them.” [L1N2DE2KQ]
As the police action against protesters gave him safe passage, Trump walked from the White House to nearby St. John’s Episcopal Church along with officials including U.S. Attorney General William Barr, where they posed for photos as the president held up a Bible.
Anti-police brutality marches and rallies, which have turned violent after dark each night over the last week, erupted over the death of George Floyd, a 46-year-old African American who died in Minneapolis police custody after being pinned beneath a white officer’s knee for nearly nine minutes.
A second autopsy ordered by Floyd’s family and released on Monday found that his death was a homicide by “mechanical asphyxiation,” meaning some physical force interfered with his oxygen supply. The report says three officers contributed to Floyd’s death.
The Hennepin County Medical Examiner on Monday released details of its autopsy findings that also said Floyd’s death was a homicide caused by asphyxiation. The county report added that Floyd suffered cardiopulmonary arrest while being restrained by police and that he had arteriosclerotic and hypertensive heart disease, fentanyl intoxication and recent methamphetamine use.
The new findings emerged after Trump spoke to the governors earlier in the day.
“You have to dominate,” he told them in a private call obtained by Reuters. “If you don’t dominate, you’re wasting your time – they’re going to run over you, you’re going to look like a bunch of jerks.”
Trump said the federal government was going to clamp down “very strong” on the violence. National Guard troops were deployed near the White House early Monday evening.
Dozens of cities across the United States remain under curfews at levels not seen since riots that broke out following the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. The National Guard deployed in 23 states and Washington, D.C.
One person was killed in Louisville, Kentucky, overnight where police and National Guard troops returned fire while trying to disperse a crowd. Police in Chicago fielded some 10,000 calls for looting, Mayor Lori Lightfoot said.
The unrest, which erupted as the country was easing sweeping lockdowns to stop the spread of the coronavirus, began with peaceful protests over Floyd’s death.
Derek Chauvin, a since-fired 44-year-old officer, has been arrested and charged with third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.
On Monday, dozens of people paid their respects to Floyd outside Cup Foods, the scene of his death. Visitors left flowers and signs honoring Floyd. A little girl wrote, “I’ll fight with you,” in aqua blue chalk in the road.
“This is therapeutic. My heart was real heavy this morning so I came down extra early and when I got here, the heaviness lifted,” said Diana Jones, 40, the mother of four children. “This right here let’s me know that things are going to be OK.”
Terrence Floyd, the victim’s brother, told the gathering he wanted people to get educated, vote and not destroy their own communities. “Let’s do this another way,” he said.
Floyd’s death was the latest to prompt an outcry over racism in law enforcement. It reignited outrage across a politically and racially divided country that has been hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic, with African Americans accounting for a disproportionately high number of cases.
The US Justice Department has directed the Bureau of Prisons to send riot-control teams to Miami and Washington, D.C., to help manage the protests, a department official told reporters.
Department investigators are interviewing people arrested during protests who might face federal charges for such offenses as crossing state lines to incite violence, the official said.
Many cities affected by the unrest are allowing some businesses to reopen after more than two months of stay-at-home orders to stem a pandemic that has killed more than 104,000 people and left 40 million others jobless.
Trump has condemned the killing of Floyd and promised justice but has described protesters as “thugs.”
Critics accuse the Republican president, who is seeking re-election in November, of stoking conflict and racial tension when he should be uniting the nation and addressing underlying issues.
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden met with black community leaders in a church and said he would create a police oversight board within his first 100 days in the White House if elected.
1,76,805 travellers and persons in contact with suspected cases under surveillance
The Union Territory of J&K recorded 155 cases of novel coronavirus on Monday taking the total to 2,601. Three deaths were reported due to it.
“Of the 155 cases, 99 were from the Jammu division and 56 from the Kashmir division. Two deaths were reported from the Kashmir division and one from the Jammu division taking the toll to 31. Meanwhile, 946 patients have recovered so far,” a government spokesman said.
The spokesman said 1,76,805 travellers and persons in contact with suspected cases have been enlisted for surveillance in J&K.
“The fresh cases include nine pregnant women and a doctor,” said Dr. Salim Khan, nodal officer for the COVID-19 at the Government Medical College here.
The fatalities included a 45-year-old man from Shopian, a 70-year-old man from Pulwama and a 72-year-old man from Doda district.
Researchers have found that populations living in higher altitudes, especially 3,000 meters (9,842 feet) above the sea level, significantly report lower levels of coronavirus infections than their lowland counterparts.
The Washington Post cited one peer-reviewed study, published in the journal Respiratory Physiology & Neurobiology, in which researchers from Australia, Bolivia, Canada and Switzerland looking at epidemiological data from Bolivia, Ecuador and Tibet found that Tibet’s infection rate was “drastically” lower than that of lowland China, three times lower in the Bolivian Andes than in the rest of the country and four times lower in the Ecuadoran Andes.
Cusco in Peru, a picturesque Andean valley, the high-altitude city of 420,000 residents, had only recorded the death of three tourists from Mexico, China and Britain, between March 23 and April 3, at the start of Peru’s strict national lockdown. Since then, there has not been another covid-19 fatality in the entire Cusco region, even as the disease has claimed more than 4,000 lives nationally.
Infections have also remained low. Just 916 of Peru’s 141,000 cases come from the Cusco region, meaning its contagion rate is more than 80 per cent below the national average.
The illness’s link to high-elevation regions has prompted speculation from researchers that the coronavirus gets ”soroche”, the Quechua word for altitude sickness.
Similarly, Ecuador has suffered one of Latin America’s worst outbreaks, with more than 38,000 reported cases and more than 3,300 deaths, according to official figures. But it has been centered on the Pacific port of Guayaquil. Bolivia’s 8,387 cases have been concentrated in the department of Santa Cruz, just a few hundred feet above sea level. But the department of La Paz, home to the world’s highest capital, has had just 410 cases.
The researchers hypothesise that populations living at high altitudes might be benefiting from a combination of an ability to cope with hypoxia (low levels of oxygen in the blood) and a natural environment hostile to the virus — including dry mountain air, high levels of UV radiation and the possibility that lower barometric pressure reduces the virus’s ability to linger in the air, the report further said.
Just three populations in the world have been found to have genetic adaptations to altitude: Himalayans, Ethiopian highlanders and Andeans. Yet Clayton Cowl, a pulmonologist at the Mayo Clinic and a former president of the American College of Chest Physicians, suspects the trend may be more closely related to acclimatization, the body’s ability to adjust temporarily to altitude, than to DNA.
Advertisement Cowl notes that prolonged exposure to altitude triggers a chain reaction in the lungs involving a protein known as ACE2 that might prevent pulmonary shunting, a problem common among COVID-19 patients.
Ordinarily, when a part of the lung is damaged, the body redirects the flow of blood toward healthier areas that are better able to absorb oxygen. Shunting stops that process of redirection, resulting in hypoxia. It is, according to Cowl, a common element among the roughly 30 per cent of COVID-19 patients who exhibit mild symptoms yet have unusually low levels of oxygen in their blood — and who sometimes take a sudden turn for the worse.
Advertisement But researchers are still looking for more evidence to establish the high-altitude populations’ response to the coronavirus, including the possibility that when infected, they sicken less and are therefore less likely to seek medical treatment or testing.
“The virus likes people. It doesn’t care about altitude,” says Peter Chin-Hong, a researcher on infectious diseases from the University of California in San Francisco.
“But we’re still learning so much about this disease, and this does provide us with some good clues to try and understand its progression,” he added.
Govt Undertakes To Submit Detention Record By Then
Srinagar: The Jammu and Kashmir High Court on Monday said it will consider plea challenging detention under Public Safety Act of Ali Muhammad Sagar, General Secretary of National Conference, on June 10.
A bench of Justice Sindhu Sharma passed the orders after Senior Additional Advocate General B. A. Dar undertook to produce the Sagar’s detention record before the Court by June 10.
Earlier, the Senior AAG submitted that he has filed counter affidavit and copy of the same has also been provided to counsel representing Sagar— Advocate Shuja-ul-Haq.
“List for consideration on 10.06.2020,” the court said, according to the GNS correspondent.
On May 20 last , the court granted “last and final opportunity” of ten days to the government for filing the counter-affidavit.
Previously, the court had directed the Government to consider the bail plea of Sagar having regard to health grounds and submit the report.
The court had also directed state counsel to keep available detention record. The application states that Sagar is an old aged person and is suffering from hypertension and orthopaedic complications.
“The applicant (Sagar) has developed a severe cardio vascular ailment during his detention since August 6,” reads the application. (GNS)
Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Monday said the Narendra Modi-led central government cannot take the issue of the Indo-China border skirmish along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Ladakh and will not compromise on it.
“We can’t take the issue of LAC lightly,” he told CNN-News in an exclusive interview. “The government will not compromise one bit on this issue. We are dealing with this both militarily and diplomatically.”
Several areas along the LAC in Ladakh and North Sikkim have seen major military build-up by both the Indian and Chinese armies, in a clear signal of escalating tension and hardening of positions by the two sides even two weeks after they were engaged in two separate face-offs.
However, Shah did not respond when asked if China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has entered Indian territory.
Both India and China have maintained that ‘military and diplomatic’ level talks are on to amicably resolve the issue.
India has said the Chinese military was hindering normal patrolling by its troops along the LAC and has strongly refuted Beijing’s contention the escalating tension was triggered by trespassing of Indian forces across the Chinese side.
US President Donald Trump had also offered to “mediate or arbitrate” the raging border dispute between the two most populous countries, saying he was “ready, willing and able” to ease the tensions.
China asked India to be careful not to include the US factor in its handling of any problem in its relations with China, “otherwise it will only complicate the issue”. “The offer of US mediation is unnecessary and the last thing both sides could use. China and India have the ability to resolve their problems, and there is no need for any third-party intervention,” it said.
