Top Best Current Affairs 8 April 2020 (2)

Indian Railways has successfully converted 2500 coaches as Isolation Units with limited manpower amid the lockdown due to coronavirus outbreak.With the conversion of around 2500 coaches, 40000 isolation beds are now ready for contingency. On average, 375 coaches per day are being converted by Indian Railways. The conversion is being carried out at 133 locations in the country.

West Bengal state government has asked the Centre to release Rs.5,013 crore as the revenue deficit grant to the state. The fund will be used to tackle the COVID-19 crisis. The grant was provided by the 15th Finance Commission.

A survey released by the Center for Monitoring Indian Economy Pvt. Ltd. (CMIE) stated that the unemployment rate in India has climbed to more than 20%. The decline has occurred as the people lost jobs after the nationwide lockdown due to the Coronavirus pandemic. The report stated that the jobless rate based on a sample size of 9,429 observations was 23.4% as of 5 April 2020.

Anurag Srivastava on April 6, 2020 took charge as the official spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) from Raveesh Kumar.Srivastava, a 1999-batch Indian Foreign Service officer, was serving as India's Ambassador to Ethiopia.

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has announced a 5T plan to stop the spread of the novel coronavirus. The 5T plan is testing, tracing, treatment, teamwork, and track.

The Department of Science & Technology (DST) funded 'Module Innovations', a Pune based healthcare startup to develop a rapid diagnosis of diseases to develop a product for detecting COVID 19 with a 10 to 15-minute test.The startup is now developing nCoVSENSEs (TM) module. It is a rapid test device for the detection of antibodies that have been generated against the COVID-19 in the human body.

Indian Smart Cities namely Bengaluru, Pune, Surat, and Tumakuru are using the integrated data dashboards to provide up-to-date information about the status of coronavirus in different administrative zones of their cities. The data dashboards are developed by the data analysts and data experts who work with their Integrated Command and Control Centre (ICCC) and function as COVID-19 War Rooms in many cities. The Government of India launched the Smart Cities Mission on 25 June 2015.

The Department of Science & Technology (DST) has approved the anti-microbial coating which was developed by Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR). It also supports the further development of the coating for India's combat against COVID-19.When coated on different surfaces such as textiles, plastic and so on, the coating could kill a range of virus types including COVID-19.