Corona

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

Published

1 month 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

‘Feluda’ India’s first low cost Covid-19 test launch by Tata group.

Published

1 day ago

September 20, 2020

Himanshu Johri

DCGI has approved India’s first CRISPR Covid-19 test developed by the Tata Group and CSIR-IGIB
Tata group has worked closely with CSIR-IGIB and ICMR to create a high-quality test that will help the nation ramp up Covid-19 testing quickly and economically.
The Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) has approved the commercial launch of ‘Feluda’, a COVID-19 test developed by the Tata Group and CSIR-IGIB (Council of Scientific and Industrial Research-Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology).

The test uses an indigenously-developed CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) technology for detection of SARS-CoV-2’s genomic sequence. CRISPR, a technology developed by CSIR-IGIB (Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology), is a genome editing technology used to diagnose diseases.

This CRISPR test reportedly achieves accuracy levels of the traditional RT-PCR tests with quicker turnaround time. The test uses less expensive equipment and is easier to use.

“The Tata CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) test, powered by CSIR-IGIB (Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology) FELUDA, received regulatory approvals today from DCGI for commercial launch, as per ICMR (Indian Council of Medical Research) guidelines, meeting high quality benchmarks with 96 per cent sensitivity and 98 per cent specificity for detecting novel coronavirus,” CSIR’s statement said.

This is the world’s first diagnostic test to deploy a specially adapted Cas9 protein to successfully detect the novel coronavirus, which causes COVID-19.

News agency PTI quoted Girish Krishnamurthy, CEO, TATA Medical and Diagnostics Ltd. say saying that the “Approval for the Tata CRISPR test for COVID-19 will give a boost to the country’s efforts in fighting the global pandemic.”

“The commercialisation of Tata CRISPR test reflects the tremendous R&D talent in the country which can collaborate to transform India’s contributions to the global healthcare and scientific research world,” he said.

According to PTI, CSIR-IGIB Director Anurag Agrawal said that the work started by CSIR under the sickle cell mission for genome diagnostics and therapeutics led to new knowledge that could be harnessed to quickly develop new diagnostic test for SARS-CoV-2.

(With inputs from PTI)