Corona

Due to lack of cash,India’s Largest crocodile park on the verge of closure after lockdown.

Published

4 months ago

August 10, 2020

India’s largest crocodile park may have as little as four months before it runs out of funds to feed animals, pay staff and do research, as ticket revenue shrinks after corona virus lock down choked the flow of visitors, park officials said.

Annual sales of about 5 million tickets usually make up roughly half the revenue of the park, located about 40 km (25 miles) from the southern city of Chennai, but it has been shut since March 16, with no prospect of reopening in sight.

The lock down during the summer vacation season have cost an estimated 14 million rupees ($187,000) as visitors dropped by almost 2.5 million, said Allwin Jesudasan, the director of the Madras Crocodile Bank.

“Our present funding situation will allow us to stay functional for another three or four months,” he told Reuters.

Started in 1976 by American-born snake expert Romulus Whitaker, who has also won recognition for his conservation work, the park is spread over 8.5 acres (3.44 hectares).

It is home to more than 2,000 crocodiles and alligators, as well as reptiles such as turtles, tortoises, lizards and snakes.

“Our senior staff have taken a voluntary 10% to 50% pay cut on their salaries and we have cut down our activities to just the critical ones,” the park said in an appeal for funds on its website.

But the future of its staff and animals was not immediately clear after funds are exhausted.

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Corona

COVID-19 cases in US may double before Joe Biden takes office

Published

1 day ago

November 23, 2020

AKK DESK TEAM

Soon after the US President-elect Joe Biden signalled that fighting the Covid-19 pandemic will be an immediate priority for his administration, a new study revealed that coronavirus cases in the country are likely to double before he takes office.

According to the study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, Inauguration Day is still two months away and the number of confirmed Covid-19 cases are likely to increase to 20 million by the end of January, nearly doubling the current level of 12.3 million cases.

“One of the key reasons for the increased accuracy of our model over other Covid-19 forecasts is that this model accounts for the fact that people live in interconnected social networks rather than interacting mostly with random groups of strangers,” said study author Raphael Thomadsen from Washington University in the US.

“This allows the model to forecast that growth will not continue at exponential rates for long periods of time, as classic Covid-19 forecasts predict,” Thomadsen added.

An interactive online version of the model also allows users to observe the impact different levels of social distancing will have on the spread of Covid-19.

The current social distancing reflects an approximate 60 per cent return to normalcy, as compared with the level of social distancing before the pandemic.

“If we continue, as a nation, at the current level of social distancing, the model forecasts that we are likely to reach 20 million cases before the end of January 2021,” the authors wrote.

The upcoming holiday season will present a great deal of uncertainty to the outlook of the pandemic as people travel more at the end of the year.

“This will likely make our forecast an optimistic one,” said Meng Liu, assistant professor of marketing and study co-author.