News in Short

• The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) announced that all domestic and international flights will remain suspended till May 3. 
• The Indian Railways also suspended all passenger trains till May 3 after the prime minister’s address. The railways said no advance booking of train tickets will be allowed till further notice.
• The government said, after April 20, there will be graded relaxations in areas based on the epidemiological assessment – incidence of the outbreak and the intensity.

• The Jharkhand government is going to experiment with Co-Bot (collaborative robot) to check for infection in an isolation facility dedicated for COVID-19 patients. It is expected to cut down human interference in patient care.
• The hospital where the first Co-Bot would be deployed is Chakradharpur Railway Hospital, where a isolation facility will be inaugurated.
• In the isolation facility, the Co-Bot would transfer both medicines and food from one bed to another, without needing health workers to attend to COVID-19 patients.

• Engineering students in Kerala have developed mini-ventilator models that could serve as portable breathing assistants to support patients with respiratory problems.
• Teams from 34 colleges participated in a competition organised by the University COVID-19 Cell to design low-cost and easy-to-use ventilators that could serve COVID-19 patients in during exigencies.
• The institutions have been directed to install the respiratory support models in the COVID-19 hospitals in the respective districts after obtaining permission from the District Medical Officers.

• The Naval Aircraft Yard (Kochi) under the Southern Naval Command has indigenously designed and fabricated an Air Evacuation Pod (AEP) for safe evacuation of COVID-19 patients from ships and islands in a fully sealed patient transfer capsule so as to avoid the risk of infection to pilots and evacuation team.
• The pod was designed under the guidance of the principal medical officer of Naval Air Station Garuda in consultation with specialists from naval hospital Sanjivani and the command headquarters.
• It is made of aluminium, rubber and perspex. Trials were undertaken on April 8 on board an Advanced Light Helicopter and Dornier aircraft.

• The Indian Council of Medical Research said emerging research suggests that transmission of the coronavirus from mother to child before birth, or at the time of delivery is possible.
• The medical body said no cases of breast milk testing positive for the coronavirus have been recorded at present. There is also no data that suggests a correlation between miscarriage or early pregnancy loss and Covid-19.
• The medical body clarified that pregnant women do no appear to be more vulnerable to the Covid-19 infection than the general population. However, pregnancy itself alters the body’s immune system and its response to viral infections in general.