NEW DELHI: There isn’t any room at Sion Hospital in India’s megacity, Mumbai – approximately all 500 beds reserved for COVID-19 patients are occupied. And with new patients coming in daily, a doctor said the hospital is being forced to add beds every second day.
Waiting lists in some hospitals in the city are so unreasonable that “numbers can’t define the burden on hospitals,” said Dr. Om Shrivastava, an infectious diseases expert.
Scenes like this were common last year, when India looked set to become the worst affected country with daily cases nearly crossing 100,000. For several months, infections had receded, baffling experts, then since February, cases have climbed faster than before with a seven-day rolling average of 59,000. On Thursday, India reported more than 72,000 cases, its highest spike in six months.
“I think it’s going to be worse (than last year),” said Shrivastava. “If it doesn’t quell in a few months time, we may be in for the long haul.”
Experts say there is a pressing need for India to bolster vaccinations, which started sluggishly in January. The country is expanding its drive to include everyone over 45 years from Thursday.
But scaling up vaccinations in India has implications beyond its borders. Spotlight on Serum Institute of India – the world’s largest maker of vaccines and key global supplier – to cater to cases at home has resulted in delays of global shipments of up to 90 million doses under the UN-backed COVAX program, an initiative devised to give countries access to vaccines regardless of their wealth. Serum Institute declined to comment.
This could have negative consequences worldwide, setting back supplies in developing countries reliant on Indian exports. But some health experts argue that India’s rising caseload is a global public health problem too.
India has exported more vaccines, 64 million doses, than it has administered its own population at 62 million doses, official data showed.
Irrespective of where vaccines are being made, we need to send them to “places where you’re seeing an upward trajectory,” said Bhramar Mukherjee, a biostatistician at the University of Michigan who has been tracking the pandemic in India.
And India certainly qualifies: Nearly all its 28 states have seen a rise. Six states account for more than 78 percent of India’s total caseload, which at 12 million is the third-highest in the world. Cases have increased six-fold in less than two months, and deaths – a lagging indicator in the pandemic that follows hospitalization – are rising too.
Maharashtra state, home to Mumbai, is behind 60 percent of daily cases and accounts for about the same percentage of active cases. Capital New Delhi and states of Punjab, Karnataka, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and Madhya Pradesh are also among the worst-hit.
After a grinding lockdown and falling cases, life in India had returned to normal in many places. Markets are teeming with people, politicians are addressing massive rallies in local elections and a religious gathering in Uttarakhand state is expected to draw hundreds of thousands of devotees in April.
International travel has also resumed in high volumes, bringing in variants first detected in the United Kingdom, South Africa and Brazil. These variants, designated as those of concern, were found in 7 percent of nearly 11,000 samples sequenced since Dec. 30.
India also confirmed a new and potentially troublesome variant at home. Officials have cautioned against linking the variants to the surge, and experts say more expansive genomic analysis is needed to determine how much they are contributing to the rise.
The new infections have also cast doubt over herd immunity – the threshold at which enough people have developed immunity to the virus, by falling sick or being vaccinated – which was floated by some experts earlier this year to explain dropping cases. The last nationwide serological survey found that 21.4 percent of adults had been infected before vaccinations began in January, implying that a large section of India’s nearly 1.4 billion population remains vulnerable.
“It’s a perfect storm of careless crowd behavior, laxity in government vigilance and a misleading perception of herd immunity,” said K Srinath Reddy, president of the Public Health Foundation of India. “The virus rode through gates which were left wide open.”
India fights coronavirus surge, steps up jabs amid export row
https://arab.news/n2mse
India fights coronavirus surge, steps up jabs amid export row
- Experts say there is a pressing need for India to bolster vaccinations, which started sluggishly in January
- India confirmed a new and potentially troublesome variant at home
Syrian refugee murdered in UK had only been in town a fortnight: Uncle
- Ahmad Mamdouh Al-Ibrahim, 16, was stabbed in the neck in Huddersfield
- ‘He was a good boy. He came here (from Homs) to be a doctor, to save people’
LONDON: The uncle of a young Syrian refugee who was stabbed to death in the UK on April 3 said the boy had only lived in the town he was in for two weeks before his murder.
Ahmad Mamdouh Al-Ibrahim, 16, was stabbed in the neck in Huddersfield while out getting to know the area. Alfie Franco, 20, was arrested and appeared in court charged with Al-Ibrahim’s murder.
Al-Ibrahim was living in Huddersfield with the family of his uncle, who told The Guardian that he had encouraged his nephew to go out and make friends following the end of Ramadan.
“He was trying to make a friend, because he didn’t have friends here. I said to him, you have to go out into the town centre to know (where everything is), to know where you can go shopping … plus, you’re going to make friends,” said his uncle, who asked to remain anonymous.
“He’d only spent a few days with my kids but they loved him so much because he was a very nice boy, very lovely and kindly with the kids. He played with them and gave them a lot of time.”
He said rumors circulating online that his nephew was a drug dealer had caused him great distress, adding that he had not yet told his own children, all aged under 10, that their cousin is dead. They believe he is still in hospital.
“He was only 16,” he said tearfully. “He was a good boy. He went from a nice family (in Syria) to a nice family (in the UK).”
Al-Ibrahim, he said, had left behind his family in the Syrian city of Homs, where he had been a popular student with teachers and classmates, and had excelled at maths.
“That’s why he came here. He wished to be a doctor, to save people,” said his uncle, who fled the civil war in Syria.
“We’ve been eight years here — we’ve not had trouble, not had a problem. We go from work to home, school, that’s it.”
Al-Ibrahim’s uncle said when he first moved to the UK last October, his nephew had spent time in a refugee center in Swansea.
He told The Guardian that staff at the center, as well as the teenager’s social worker, were “heartbroken” by what had happened, and that they told him they had “never seen him happy like this” when they checked on his well-being after he moved to Huddersfield on March 20.
“They were crying for Ahmad, they said they loved him,” the uncle said, adding that the family had been left afraid by the killing.
“I’ve been (in Huddersfield) eight years. I thought it was a safe place. I didn’t worry before, like now.”
Many members of the local community have raised money for Al-Ibrahim’s body to be returned to his family in Syria.
Maneer Siddique, who owns a local tailoring business, launched a fundraising page that has raised over £10,000 ($12,910) for the family.
“You would want help if you were in a dire situation, so why shouldn’t you help somebody else in a dire situation,” Siddique told The Guardian.
Pope Francis in surprise St. Peter’s visit a day after meeting King Charles
- Pope Francis entered the sprawling basilica in his wheelchair, greeting workers engaged in restoration work and some gathered pilgrims
VATICAN CITY: Pope Francis, who is recovering from life-threatening pneumonia, made an unscheduled visit to St. Peter’s Basilica Thursday, his second surprise event in two days after previously meeting King Charles III.
The public appearance, after Wednesday’s unscheduled private audience with the king and Queen Camilla, comes as the 88-year-old Catholic leader recovers at the Vatican after five weeks in hospital.
On Thursday afternoon, the pope entered the sprawling basilica in his wheelchair, greeting workers engaged in restoration work and some gathered pilgrims, Vatican News reported.
When a young restorer caught a glimpse of the pope, he beckoned to her to come closer so he could thank her and shake her hand, the ANSA agency reported.
The young woman replied “that she was sorry that her ‘hands were cold’ but the pope wanted to shake them anyway,” the agency reported.
Monsignor Valerio Di Palma, the canon of St. Peter’s, told Vatican News the pope’s appearance sparked “too much emotion.”
“My vision blurred from the tears and I couldn’t even take a photo,” he said.
Francis then proceeded to the tomb of Pope Pius X to pray, before departing back to the Santa Marta guesthouse, where he resides.
On Wednesday afternoon, the pope met privately with Charles and Camilla for 20 minutes, despite Buckingham Palace having earlier canceled a planned official audience due to the pontiff’s frail health.
It was the first meeting between Charles, the head of the Protestant Church of England, and the pope since the monarch ascended to the throne in 2022.
The Vatican published a photo of the meeting on Thursday morning, showing the pope clasping the queen’s hand, with the king looking on holding a gift box.
Francis offered his congratulations to the royal couple, who celebrated their 20th wedding anniversary Wednesday, the palace and the Vatican said.
During the encounter, the king — who is receiving treatment for cancer — and the pope also exchanged well-wishes for each other’s health, the Vatican said.
“Their majesties were delighted the Pope was well enough to host them — and to have had the opportunity to share their best wishes in person,” a Buckingham Palace statement added.
Charles, 76, has been suffering from an unnamed cancer for more than a year and less than two weeks ago he was briefly admitted to hospital after experiencing side effects from his treatment.
He was out of action for a matter of days before resuming his official engagements on April 1.
Francis, who almost died twice during his treatment for double pneumonia, has been in convalescence since his return to the Vatican on March 23.
Despite being ordered to rest and recover for two months, the Argentine made an unexpected appearance in St. Peter’s Square last Sunday at the end of a mass.
On Tuesday, the Vatican said that Francis’s voice and mobility were improving, raising hopes that he may take part in upcoming Easter celebrations.
He has been using a cannula — a plastic tube tucked into the nostrils — to help him breathe, notably at night, but was not wearing one in the picture released Thursday.
First Bangladeshi company enters Saudi startup ecosystem through $110m merger
- Backed by Saudi, US investment, ShopUp merges with Sary to form SILQ
- Merger prompts Bangladesh’s central bank to establish special startup fund
DHAKA: Bangladesh’s largest B2B commerce platform ShopUp has entered Saudi Arabia’s startup ecosystem through a merger with Riyadh-based services and marketplace platform Sary, backed by US and Saudi investors.
Both ShopUp and Sary help small businesses buy products in bulk from wholesalers or manufacturers with digital ordering platforms, delivery and financial services.
Together they have formed SILQ Group, backed by a $110 million funding led by Sanabil Investments — a company owned by the Saudi Public Investment Fund and Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures.
The companies said in their merger announcement on Wednesday that they are “set to become one of the world’s largest trade corridors. It is projected to reach $682 billion.”
“We’re building infrastructure that helps small businesses move goods, access financing, and grow. A key part of this is the launch of SILQ Financial, our dedicated financing arm focused on driving innovation in SME funding. It allows us to offer embedded financial products — natively within our platforms,” ShopUp’s CEO Afeef Zaman told Arab News.
“There’s a $682 billion trade opportunity emerging right here between the Gulf and Emerging Asia. We want to go deep and serve this corridor well ... We’re laying the foundation to expand beyond this corridor in the long term.”
ShopUp was founded by Zaman, Ataur Rahim Chowdhury, and Navaneetha Krishnan J. in 2017, while Sary was founded in 2018 by Mohammed Aldossary and Khaled Alsiari.
Zaman will serve as the CEO of SILQ Group and Aldossary as CEO of SILQ Financial.
ShopUp and Sary have served more than 600,000 retailers, hotels, restaurants, cafes, and wholesalers, to date. The combined network has facilitated over $5 billion in transactions and disbursed more than $750 million in embedded financing.
Zaman believes that more Bangladeshi startups will follow in ShopUp’s footsteps, as the Saudi market offers not only scale, capital, and sophistication, but also a cultural overlap, a strong consumer base — including 3 million Bangladeshi expats — “and a hunger for innovation” across retail, finance, and logistics.
“Bangladeshi startups have a lot to offer in terms of resilience and operating in high-density, resource-constrained environments. In return, Saudi Arabia offers access to institutional partnerships, forward-thinking regulation, and the ability to test and scale products that can work globally,” he said.
“Saudi Arabia is writing one of the most exciting startup stories in the world right now. The pace of change, the vision, and the level of institutional support — especially for high-impact sectors like fintech, logistics, and B2B — make it one of the most promising markets for founders.”
The Bangladeshi government welcomed ShopUp’s merger as “a defining moment” in its digital journey and “one of the most significant global expansion milestones ever achieved by a startup from Bangladesh.”
It also announced the establishment of a dedicated fund to provide capital support to startup companies.
“This moment is more than a funding headline — it’s a clear signal that Bangladeshi startups are ready for the world stage,” the government’s press wing said in a statement.
“To accelerate this momentum, Bangladesh Bank has committed to a landmark startup funding initiative: TK 800 crore (about $66 million) in equity and TK 400 crore (about $33 million) in debt. This fund will serve as a catalytic boost for early and growth-stage startups, empowering local founders to innovate, scale, and compete globally.”
Taliban morality enforcers arrest men for having the wrong hairstyle or skipping mosque
- UN report says the morality police regularly detained people arbitrarily “without due process and legal protections”
- During month of Ramadan, men’s attendance at mandated congregational prayers was closely monitored
The Taliban morality police in Afghanistan have detained men and their barbers over hairstyles and others for missing prayers at mosques during the holy month of Ramadan, a UN report said Thursday, six months after laws regulating people’s conduct came into effect.
The Vice and Virtue Ministry published laws last August covering many aspects everyday life in Afghanistan, including public transport, music, shaving and celebrations. Most notably, the ministry issued a ban on women’s voices and bare faces in public.
That same month, a top UN official warned the laws provided a “distressing vision” for the country’s future by adding to existing employment, education, and dress code restrictions on women and girls. Taliban officials have rejected UN concerns about the morality laws.
Thursday’s report, from the UN mission in Afghanistan, said in the first 6 months of the laws’ implementation, over half of detentions made under it concerned “either men not having the compliant beard length or hairstyle, or barbers providing non-compliant beard trimming or haircuts.”
The report said that the morality police regularly detained people arbitrarily “without due process and legal protections.”
During the holy fasting month of Ramadan, men’s attendance at mandated congregational prayers was closely monitored, leading at times to arbitrary detention of those who didn’t show up, the report added.
The UN mission said that both sexes were negatively affected, particularly people with small businesses such as private education centers, barbers and hairdressers, tailors, wedding caterers and restaurants, leading to a reduction or total loss of income and employment opportunities.
The direct and indirect socio-economic effects of the laws’ implementation were likely to compound Afghanistan’s dire economic situation, it said. A World Bank study has assessed that authorities’ ban on women from education and work could cost the country over $1.4 billion per year.
But the Taliban leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, has emphasized the primacy of Islamic law and the role of the Ministry of Vice and Virtue in reforming Afghan society and its people.
In a message issued ahead of the religious Eid Al-Fitr festival that marks the end of Ramadan, Akhundzada said it was necessary “to establish a society free from corruption and trials, and to prevent future generations from becoming victims of misguided beliefs, harmful practices and bad morals.”
More than 3,300 mostly male inspectors are tasked with informing people about the law and enforcing it, according to the report.
The ministry has resolved thousands of people’s complaints and defended the rights of Afghan women, according to its spokesman Saif ur Rahman Khyber.
This was in addition to “implementing divine decrees in the fields of promoting virtue, preventing vice, establishing affirmations, preventing bad deeds, and eliminating bad customs.”
The ministry was committed to all Islamic and human rights and had proven this in practice, he said Thursday, rejecting attempts to “sabotage or spread rumors” about its activities.
Hamas urges UK govt to overturn terror designation
- Palestinian group submits legal filing to home secretary
- Official slams Britain’s ‘unwavering support for Zionism, apartheid, occupation, ethnic cleansing’
LONDON: Hamas has submitted a legal filing in Britain demanding it be removed from the government’s list of proscribed terror groups.
The organization is arguing that it is a “Palestinian Islamic liberation and resistance movement whose goal is to liberate Palestine and confront the Zionist project,” and not a terrorist group.
The claim includes a witness statement by Mousa Abu Marzouk, Hamas’s head of international relations and the applicant for the filing. It was submitted to Home Secretary Yvette Cooper.
Abu Marzouk’s statement said: “The British government’s decision to proscribe Hamas is an unjust one that is symptomatic of its unwavering support for Zionism, apartheid, occupation and ethnic cleansing in Palestine for over a century.
“Hamas does not and never has posed a threat to Britain, despite the latter’s ongoing complicity in the genocide of our people.”
The UK proscribed Hamas’s military wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades, in 2001, and added its political wing to the list of terror organizations in 2021.
At the time, the government described the distinction between the two wings as “artificial” and said Hamas was a “complex but single terrorist organization.” Support for proscribed organizations is a criminal offense in Britain.
Hamas’s legal team at Riverway Law, which is representing the organization pro brono because it is illegal to receive funds from proscribed groups, sent a document to Drop Site News summarizing its arguments.
The team said: “Hamas does not deny that its actions fall within the wide definition of ‘terrorism’ under the Terrorism Act 2000.
“Instead, it notes that the definition also covers all groups and organizations around the world that use violence to achieve political objectives, including the Israeli armed forces, the Ukrainian army and indeed the British armed forces.”
The team added: “Rather than allow freedom of speech, police have embarked on a campaign of political intimidation and persecution of journalists, academics, peace activists and students over their perceived support for Hamas.
“People in Britain must be free to speak about Hamas and its struggle to restore to the Palestinian people the right to self-determination.”
Hamas is the “only effective military force resisting” Israel’s illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories, the team said, highlighting Britain’s obligations under international law to prevent genocide and crimes against humanity.
The proscription is also disproportionate as Hamas “does not pose any threat to Britain or British citizens,” the team added.
Hamas’s presence on the list of terrorist organizations is hindering its ability to broker a political solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the lawyers said.
Riverway Law’s director, Fahad Ansari, is leading the legal challenge. He is being helped by Daniel Grutters, a barrister at One Pump Court Chambers, and Franck Magennis, a barrister at Garden Court Chambers.
In December 2020, Magennis said: “Zionism is a kind of racism. It is essentially colonial. It has manifested in an apartheid regime calling itself ‘the Jewish state’ that dominates non-Jews, and particularly Palestinians.”
The Home Office said it does not comment on proscription cases. Deproscription is rare in the UK, with just four groups having been removed from the list of terrorist organizations.
Grutters represented pro-Palestinian students who set up a camp at the London School of Economics last May, the Daily Telegraph reported. The students were barred by the university through a court order.
Cooper said the government will reject Hamas’s appeal, and “maintains its view” that the group is a “barbaric terrorist organization.”
Priti Patel, the former home secretary who expanded Hamas’s proscription on the terror list in 2021, said the “evil” group still poses an “ongoing threat” to British national security.
“Those campaigning to end the proscription of Hamas fail to understand the seriousness of the threats and danger this terrorist organization poses,” she added.
