Focus Merit

Category: National Current Affairs

“Caruna” launched by Civil Servants to fight COVID-19

April 5, 2020
caruna
  • Civil Servant Officers’ Association has launched “Caruna” initiative to support the government’s efforts to tackle coronavirus.
  • Caruna stands for “Civil Services Associations Reach to Support in Natural Disasters“

“Prana-Vayu” low-cost ventilator developed by IIT-Roorkee

April 5, 2020
prana vayu
  • To tackle the urgent demand of the ventilators in country due to COVID-19 IIT-Roorkee in collaboration with AIIMS-Rishikesh, Uttarakhand has developed a very low-cost portable prana-vayu ventilator 
  • This portable ventilator will be available at a cost of Rs. 25000 only

Salary of Pm, President, and MPs to be cut by 30%

April 5, 2020
salary cut
  • All members of the parliament including the president, prime minister, and all the other MPs will face a salary cut of 30% for the next 1 year from 1 April 2020.
  • This ordinance has been passed due to the outbreak of the COVID-19.

“CAWACH” response center set up by Dept. of Science and Technology

April 4, 2020
dept of science and technology
  • Center for Augmenting War with COVID-19 Health Crisis( CAWACH), a rapid response center has been set up by Dept of Science and Technology.
  • It has been set up with a total cosst of 56 crore at Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship(SINE), IIT Bombay.
  • It has been set up to support startups that are working to find some innovating solutions for the COVID-19

Hackathon ” Hack the Crisis-India ” launched

April 4, 2020
hack the crisis in india
  • Hackathon “Hack the crisis-India” has been organized by “Hack a cause-India” and ” Ficci Ladies Organization Pune” along with the support of the Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology, Government of India.

All health insurance policies to cover COVID hospitalization expenses: IRDAI

April 4, 2020
IRDAI

Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India(IRDAI) has made it mandatory to cover hospitalization charges of COVID-19 to protect patients from the financial burden due to this pandemic under the standard insurance Product “Aarogya Sanjeevani”

Telecom service providers and C-DOT develop COVID Quarantine alert system

April 4, 2020
C-DOT
    • In order to keep corona virus positive quarantined  patients within the quarantines area, telecom service providers and The Centre for Development of Telematics(C-DOT) has developed an application that can alert through SMS or e-mail  in case if quarantined patient leaves the quarantine zone.

Govt launches corona tracker app: Aarogya Setu

April 4, 2020
aarogya setu
  • As number of cases of COVID-19 are increasing at a rapid pace, government of India has launched an app to guide people about the Corona Virus.
  • “Aarogya Setu” is launched by the National Informatics Center that comes under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology.
  • This app uses location based tracking and bluetooth technology and alerts users if they come in contact with any corona positive patient.

‘Ex NCC Yogdan’ launched by NCC to fight COVID-19

April 3, 2020
ncc
  • National Cadet Corps(NCC) has launched ‘Ex NCC Yogdan’ for its volunteer cadets to fight COVID-19.
  • Under this, NCC has issued guidelines to temporarily employ its cadets in relief works or in case of any emergency that may arise due to COVID-19 in the near future.

“Watson Assistant for citizens” AI bot by IBM launched

April 3, 2020
ibm
  • IBM has launched an Artificial intelligence based platform named ” Watson Assistant for Citizens” to address queries related to COVID-19.
  • It uses Natural Language Processing and Artifical intelligence to learn and create a suitable response to the queries of the users.