A worker checks medical oxygen cylinders at Government Medical College and Hospital in Jammu on Wednesday. PTI

Jammu, April 28

The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) will set up two 500-bed Covid hospitals in Jammu and Srinagar, officials said on Wednesday.

Union Home Secretary Ajay Bhalla, while chairing a high-level meeting, reviewed the proposal to set up the hospitals, they added. Bhalla asked the Jammu and Kashmir administration to immediately identify suitable locations for constructing the hospitals. He also asked the DRDO to evaluate and submit the corresponding proposal estimates through a team of experts.

The meeting was informed that the administration has identified two patches of land in Jammu and Srinagar for the purpose. Jammu and Kashmir Chief Secretary BVR Subrahmanyam, Financial Commissioner, Health, Atal Dulloo, the Union secretaries of the departments concerned and officers from the DRDO, the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) and the AFMS Institute attended the meeting. To mitigate the shortages in medical facilities, it was requested that the temporary DRDO Covid hospitals be constructed in time, an official spokesperson said. — PTI

Medical oxygen stocks set to surge in J&K

• In an attempt to pre-empt the medical catastrophe that has afflicted Delhi, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka and some other states, the Government of Jammu and Kashmir has taken a major initiative to boost the oxygen manufacturing across the Union Territory.
• Even as most of the major hospitals in Kashmir are already equipped with independent oxygen manufacturing plants, the authorities have stepped up the process of addingsix new plants to the system within a fortnight. PTI

84-hr lockdown in 11 districts

• An 84-hour lockdown would be imposed in 11 districts of Jammu and Kashmir on Thursday evening in a bid to tackle the surge in Covid-19 cases, a senior official said.
• The curfew would come into effect at 7 pm on Thursday and remain in force till 7 am on Monday. Eleven districts, including Srinagar, Anantnag, Baramulla, Budgam, Kulgam, Pulwama, Ganderbal, Jammu, Kathua, Reasi, Udhampur will be under curfew. PTI

Transporters want passenger fare up

Protesting against the administration’s order capping the seating capacity in public transport at 50 per cent amid the Covid-19 pandemic, dozens of transporters held a protest here on Wednesday, demanding a hike in passenger fare for the survival of the  economically-hit” industry. Private transporters have been on an indefinite strike since April 21. PTI

Officials inspect the hospital site in Panipat’s Bal Jatan village on Wednesday. Tribune Photo

The Defence Research and Development Organisation on Wednesday started constructing a 500-bed hospital in Panipat’s Bal Jatan

The hospital will be constructed in two phases. The first phase is expected to be completed in 10 days.

It is one of the two hospitals the DRDO has proposed in the state. The other one will be in Hiasr district.

“The Public Works Department has assigned the construction to an agency, which will build makeshift structures,” said Panipat DC Dharmendra Singh.

The DC said the work to lay the oxygen pipeline would be started on Friday and it would be complete within a week.

Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar had visited the Panipat site two days ago and took stock of constructio.

These containers were brought on Tuesday

New Delhi, April 28

The Indian Air Force (IAF) airlifted nine cryogenic oxygen containers from Dubai and Singapore and has brought them to the Panagarh air base in West Bengal, according to an official statement issued on Wednesday.

These containers were brought on Tuesday, it said.

In addition, the IAF’s C-17 aircraft on Tuesday also airlifted two cryogenic oxygen containers from Indore to Jamnagar, two from Jodhpur and Udaipur to Jamnagar and two from Hindon to Ranchi, it said.

“IAF’s C-17s have airlifted six cryogenic oxygen containers from Dubai to Panagarh Air Base. Another C-17 brought three oxygen containers from Singapore to Panagarh Air Base,” the statement said. 

The IAF also airlifted eight cryogenic oxygen containers from Hyderabad to Bhubaneswar, two from Bhopal to Ranchi and two from Chandigarh to Ranchi, it said.

India is struggling with the second wave of the coronavirus infection and hospitals in several states are reeling under a shortage of medical oxygen and beds in view of a rising number of Covid cases. 

The IAF has been airlifting empty oxygen tankers and containers to various filling stations across the country to speed up the distribution of the much-needed medical oxygen in treating Covid patients. PTI

Technology already installed at Ladakh and north-east

Ajay Banerjee

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, April 28

The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) has been asked to set up 500 medical oxygen plants within three months with money coming from the ‘PM cares fund’.

“Site preparation for five plants to be installed in Delhi/NCR region has already been initiated,” the Ministry of Defence said on Wednesday.

Transfer of technology has been done to Tata Advanced Systems Limited, Bengaluru, that will make 332 of these plants.https://053161fb01f9b454302c786c99827158.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html

Trident Pneumatics, Coimbatore, will produce 48 of these plants. “A supply order has been made to the two companies,’ the MoD said.

Each of these plants is designed for a capacity of 1,000 litres of oxygen per minute.  The system caters for 190 patients at a flow rate of five litres per minutes, it can charge 195 cylinders per day.

Another 120 plants with capacity of making 500 litres of oxygen per minute will be produced by industries working with Indian Institute of Petroleum, Dehradun, belonging to Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR).

The MoD has set the DRDO a target of producing 125 oxygen plants per month and 380 of these – from Tata and Trident — will be installed within three months.

The oxygen producing units based on this technology have already been installed at some of the sites of the Indian Army in North East and also in the Ladakh Region where the tree-less expanse at an altitude of 14,000 provides very little natural oxygen.

Trials were aimed to validate enhanced capability of already integrated Derby Beyond Visual Range AAM on Tejas, a DRDO statement says

The test firing in Goa on Tuesday completed a series of missile trials to validate its performance under extremely challenging scenarios. Photo: Twitter/DRDO_India

Bengaluru, April 28

India’s indigenous Light Combat Aircraft, Tejas, has added the fifth generation Python-5 Air-to-Air Missile (AAM) to its air-to-air weapons capability.

Trials were also aimed to validate enhanced capability of already integrated Derby Beyond Visual Range (BVR) AAM on Tejas, a DRDO statement said on Wednesday.

The test firing in Goa on Tuesday completed a series of missile trials to validate its performance under extremely challenging scenarios, it said.https://c426715202f202f76b41301d39202efb.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html

“Derby missile achieved direct hit on a high-speed manoeuvring aerial target and the Python missiles also achieved 100 per cent hits, thereby validating their complete capability. The trials met all their planned objectives,” the statement said.

Prior to these trials, extensive missile carriage flight tests were conducted in Bengaluru to assess integration of the missile with aircraft systems on board the Tejas, like Avionics, Fire-control radar, Missile Weapon Delivery System and the Flight Control System.

In Goa, after successful separation trials, live launch of the missile on a ‘Banshee’ target was carried out.

Python-5 missile live firing was conducted to validate target engagement from all aspects as well as beyond visual ranges. In all the live firings, missile hit the aerial target.

The missiles were fired from Tejas aircraft of Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA) flown by Indian Air Force (IAF) Test pilots belonging to National Flight Test Centre (NFTC). PTI

The Brahmaputra is the longest river in Tibet and its valley in southern Tibet is the world’s deepest

Beijing, April 28

Melting glaciers and barrier lakes could threaten China’s plan to build the world’s biggest hydroelectric dam over the Brahmaputra river in Tibet close to the Arunachal Pradesh border, a media report said on Wednesday.

The proposed dam which one Chinese official said has “no parallel in history” will be built in Medog county, where the Brahmaputra Grand Canyon is located. Medog is the last county in Tibet which is located close to the Arunachal Pradesh border.

The plan to build the mega-dam, which is part of China’s 14th five-year plan beginning from this year, was approved by China’s Parliament, the National People’s Congress in March this year.

But the engineers are concerned about the threats posed by landslides and barrier lakes to the dam, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reported.

“But an icy obstacle could put a halt to much of the plan. In 2018, a landslide caused by a melting glacier blocked the Yarlung Tsangpo – the upper stream of the Brahmaputra river – at the Sedongpu Basin in Milin county,” it said.

It formed a lake containing about 600 million cubic metres of water. With the river spilling over the top at present, the dam could collapse at any time, it said.

The Sedongpu lake sits just a few dozen kilometres upstream from the planned construction site of the super hydropower plant. With so much water hanging overhead, no construction workers can move in to clear the ground, it said.

To build the big dam, they must get rid of the small dam formed by the landslide first, the report said.

India and Bangladesh, the lower riparian states, have raised concerns over China’s plan to build the massive dam on Brahmaputra river. But China has downplayed such anxieties saying it would keep their interests in mind.h

As a lower riparian state with considerable established user rights to the waters of the trans-border rivers, the Indian government has consistently conveyed its views and concerns to the Chinese authorities and has urged them to ensure that the interests of downstream states are not harmed by any activities in upstream areas.

Brahmaputra river is known as Yarlung Zangbo in Tibet.

The Brahmaputra is the longest river in Tibet and its valley in southern Tibet is the world’s deepest with a 7,000-metre (23,000-foot) drop from the highest mountain peak to the lowest basin.

China plans to build a hydropower plant in the valley with electricity generation capacity reaching 70 gigawatts, about three times that of the Three Gorges Dam, currently the world’s largest built by the country, the report said.https://8b8994065ccaba94072b9026c62602d5.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html

Several teams of scientists and engineers have flown to Sedongpu in recent years, including some of the nation’s top experts in civil engineering, glacier study and landslide prevention. They collected a large amount of data on the site using drones and other advanced equipment and were asked by authorities to come up with a solution after finishing their assessment, it said.

“The situation is very difficult. There is not an immediate solution yet,” Xing Aiguo, a professor of civil engineering at the Shanghai Jiao Tong University who was involved in one of the studies told the Post.

The experts could not find a way to strengthen the landslide dam or remove it safely. Worse still, they found similar disasters would likely happen again in the same area, thanks to climate change.

“The area is large and there are many glaciers,” Xing said. Even if there is a method, treating such a harsh natural landscape with engineering methods could be technically challenging and costly, he said.

A quarter of the glaciers on the Tibetan Plateau have disappeared since the 1970s, and two-thirds of the remaining will be gone by the end of the century, the Post report quoted an estimate by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Studies have found that increased meltwater and rising temperatures could make the “roof of the world” more habitable with greater crop yields and advancing tree lines, but the risk of natural disasters, including flooding and landslides, also increased.

And ice could turn a landslide into something more destructive. At Sedongpu, for instance, the icy debris travelled more than 10km with a top speed of 72km/h according to an estimate by Tibet autonomous region’s geological environmental monitoring station.

The icy material also loosened the landslide dam and made it more prone to collapse. The sheer drop in elevation means even a relatively small amount of water could cause serious destruction downstream, it said.

Liu Chuanzheng, a government researcher with the Consultative Centre of Geohazard Mitigation under the Ministry of Natural Resources in Beijing, said human activity in the Sedongpu area “should be avoided altogether”.

“The development and utilisation of natural resources and energy in the Yarlung Tsangpo river must fully consider the situation of avalanches and debris flows in the Sedongpu valley,” he said in an official report about the landslide published in the journal Geology in China in 2019.

Some Chinese scientists have proposed that instead of building a super dam, a 16km-long tunnel could be dug through one of the high mountains in the Yarlung Tsangpo valley.

The water could be directed into the tunnel to push electricity generating turbines. This scheme would reduce the power output to 50GW – or about twice that of the Three Gorges Dam – but reduce the risk of damage from landslides or other natural disasters. PTI

Full-time residential programme will mentor and guide students for a period of 12 months for entrance examinations of various medical and engineering colleges spread across the country

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, April 26

As part of the Indian Army’s initiative to secure a better future for Ladakhi youth, the army’s Leh-based Corps on Monday signed an MoU with Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited (HPCL) and National Integrity and Educational Development Organisation, (NIEDO) to help students to prepare for competitive examinations.

The project, Ladakh Ignited Minds: A Centre of Excellence and Wellness, is a full-time residential programme to mentor and guide students for a period of twelve months for entrance examinations of various medical and engineering colleges spread across the country. 

The programme being run under the aegis of the Indian Army will be executed by Kanpur-based NIEDO. The Army will oversee the overall operations that includes administration and logistics with requisite funding support from HPCL.

NIEDO will not only mentor and guide the students but will also provide value-based education, soft skill training, critical life competencies, develop leadership capabilities and personality development.

Chandigarh, April 26

Amendment to the Arms Act, reducing the number of firearms possessed by a person from three to two, has come under the judicial scanner with the Punjab and Haryana High Court putting the Union of India on notice.

The notice to the Union of India, through the Ministry of Home Affairs, was issued by Justices Ritu Bahri and Meenakshi I Mehta came on a petition filed by advocate Tejinder Pal Singh Tung through senior advocate GS Bal. Taking up the matter, the Bench also fixed the case for further hearing in July first week.

Appearing before the Bench through videoconferencing, Bal submitted that the amendment was being challenged only to the extent it restricted the possession of three firearms to two as it was patently illegal, arbitrary and against the mandatory provisions of Articles 14 and 300-A of the Constitution. He submitted one firearm was required to be surrendered without providing any guidelines or purpose by the virtue of the impugned amendment. — TNS

The 100-bed facility will come up at the International Students Hostel in Panjab University’s Sector 25 campus

Vijay Mohan
Tribune News Service
Chandigarh, April 27

The Army is moving a field hospital from Himachal Pradesh to Chandigarh after the UT Administration requested the Western Command for setting up a COVID-19 care centre in view of the spike in infection cases.

The 100-bed facility will come up at the International Students Hostel in Panjab University’s Sector 25 campus.

The Army will begin moving in the equipment and staff tomorrow and the facility is expected to be fully functional in five days.

According to Col Jasdeep Sandhu, Director Civil-Military Affairs at Headquarters Western Command, the Army will be providing medicines, oxygen, ambulances and other supplies for the centre, besides doctors, para-medical and support staff.

Specialist medical cover will also be provided by the Command Hospital in Chandimandir.

In addition, the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Research and Education, Sector 12, and the Government Multi-Speciality Hospital, Sector 16, would also be available for any support. Civilian doctors would also be deputed for liaison.

A meeting was held by the Governor of Punjab and Administrator of Chandigarh, VP Singh Badnore, with officers from Headquarters Western Command today, where modalities for setting up the centre were discussed.

The International Students Hostel was selected by the Army after a survey of several sites as it has over a 100 air-conditioned rooms and open space adjacent to it. The Chandigarh Administration had earlier earmarked it as a COVID care centre on payment basis.

The Army is also moving a couple of field hospitals from different locations to other cities in the region, besides working with the civilian administration to make oxygen generation plants functional.

Centre tells SII, Bharat Biotech to slash rates

The Centre today said the risk of runaway spread of Covid infection was real unless people began practising Covid-appropriate behaviour now and states resorted to tough local lockdown measures to curb steep surge. File photo

New Delhi, April 26

The Centre today said the risk of runaway spread of Covid infection was real unless people began practising Covid-appropriate behaviour now and states resorted to tough local lockdown measures to curb steep surge.

After India logged 3,52,991 daily cases in a new world record for the fifth day, the Health Ministry said most states had crossed previous infection peaks by several times. The Centre had last night advised lockdown in cities and districts reporting over 10 per cent positivity for a week and more than 60 per cent occupancy of oxygen or ICU beds.

The advisory suggested at least 14-day strict containment in such areas. Karnataka today announced a two-week lockdown from Tuesday and Punjab also announced restrictions – night curfew on weekdays and weekend curfew.

The Ministry of Health has sought people’s participation in the Covid fight. It warned, “People must wear masks, maintain physical distancing and hand hygiene. Failure to do so may entail grave consequences. Without social distancing one person can infect 406 persons in a month; with 50 per cent reduction in exposure, 15 persons will be infected; and with 75 per cent reduction in exposure, 2.5 persons will be infected.”

The focus is on states with more than 1 lakh active cases eac h— Maharashtra (7,00,207), UP (2,97,616), Karnataka (2,62,181), Kerala (2,19,221), Rajasthan (1,36,702), Chhattisgarh (1,23,835), Gujarat (1,15,006), TN (1,05,180).

The country saw 2,812 deaths in a day. — TNS