The World Health Organization (WHO) on Monday cautioned against any relaxation of response actions following the recent slight decline in COVID-19 cases in the South-East Asia Region, saying the pandemic continues unabated and “our response only needs to be strengthened further to curtail virus transmission”.
The upcoming festival season and the approaching winter or cold season threatened to aggravate the situation “if we let our guard down”, Poonam Khetrapal Singh, Regional Director, WHO South-East Asia Region, said.
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Cannot deny services for not installing Aarogya Setu app: HC
The High Court of Karnataka on Monday clarified that the government or its agencies cannot deny any service or benefit to citizens for not installing the Aarogya Setu app on their mobile phones in the absence of any legislation.
It may be noted that the Union government has said that no public authority can refuse any service for not having Aarogya Setu app in the wake of National Executive Committee set up under the Disaster Management Act not making the use of app mandatory.
A Division Bench comprising Chief Justice Abhay Shreeniwas Oka and Justice Ashok S. Kinagi made this observation while hearing a PIL, filed by Anrivar A, Aravind, a city-based software engineer working for a non-profit organisation to protect people’s rights in the digital space.
WHO official commends Asia’s handling of coronavirus
The head of emergencies at the World Health Organization says Asia’s follow-through in the fight against COVID-19 and its populations’ greater trust in and compliance with their governments have given the continent a leg up against the coronavirus.
As Europe grapples with big surges in case counts in recent days, Dr. Michael Ryan said that if he had one golden wish that might change the game, it would be to make sure that every contact of a confirmed COVID-19 case would undergo quarantine to break the chains of transmission.
Countries like China, South Korea and Japan, which had experience against earlier respiratory disease outbreaks, have been able to implement measures longer than their counterparts in places like Europe and North America that continued to struggle against the pandemic, he said.