Hello Everyone,

I got suggestions from several members that we should provide information regarding COVID-19. While I can't provide the live tracker as it will require someone to constantly keep it updating, I also believe that we all have multiple sources to get that information.

What we can do is post here some useful links and tips for prevention, and survival.

Being desi means our main source of grocery supplies is from Indian Grocery Stores and with limited international connectivity many of our items are in short supply. If we can provide help in locating sources with availability it will be helpful.

Anything else that can help members is appreciated.

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A Proud Indian Canadian

Myself and family are doing just fine. Include my extended friend circle and relatives across north America. Hope everyone is doing great.

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A Proud Indian Canadian

This website has permitted to post to everyone who partakes and shares with one another. I have also visited people who were in hospitals TWO WEEKS ago and knowing the hazards, I kept myself secluded and away from 'cilivisation' just in case I became a carrier of 'things'. Those two weeks are over and now I sleep peacefully knowing I am not a carrier of any transmittable diseases. And if I did, then, I have built immunity to it. That is good news.

Every local Hospital has opened up a Virus Wing and the Government is paying a handsome amount to man it and maintain it too. That is news. How good the services are we will know once it gets crammed up and please remember that you may have to say good-bye to those in the ward over a hand-held device. I see this over the TV broadcasts in ITALY. It is a very sad GOOD-BYE.

This virus was discovered or detected by the US ARMY and there are five grades of them. More on it when you google. This has stopped mingling of people and it will continue to be so till it is eradicated. Even after the abatement most people will avoid parties and other crowded events.

Our Economy has gone down the drain and our markets have killed all our financial strength and our ability to spend.

Grocery shelves are bare. In some places they are only allowing a few at a time to shop and not crowd their places.

The bargain that I find that the price for a Liter of gas has hit the rock bottom due to the fights between the CRUDE suppliers. I have picked up a regular at 63 Cents/l and a few have done the same at 61c/l. Please remember in about TWO weeks the Markets will get stabilized and for the LT. investors it will be time to get in and a year from now might regain their financial health.

What ever you do, please keep away from the public till it all blows over. Keep Good Health and Enjoy Life. (KGH&EL)

FH.

If anyone is looking for atta, as-off 26-Mar-2020 @ 6:00 pm, Divya Sharbati Atta (by Gelda foods) is available at Food Basics, on Lawrence Ave E, bet. Warden Ave & Birchmount Ave, Scarborough. Cost is $10.99. It may not be the best price, but considering the circumstances, it's not a bad price.

Costco Business Centre, 50 Thermos road, Scarborough, had a few varieties of basmati rice both white and brown, priced approx. $8 to $10 / 10lbs. They also have Royal 20 lb for $20 and Duniya 40lb for $32.

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SS
Reiki Grand Master

Here is a great Grocer and a trip will be well worth it.

https://www.asianfoodcentre.com/flyer/flyer.pdf

While you are there please look for ADM Atta. If you can use it in THREE months, then, you can live free in CANADA.

FH.

Food Basics carries Saporito Canola Oil for $3.88. Great product.

EDIT: The latest flyers are available inside the stores.
https://flyers.smartcanucks.ca/canada/asian-food-centre-flyer-december-18-to-january-5

TEST for COVID -19: A kit Manufactured by ABBOTT Labs of India seems to be one of the BEST one on the market. Please read and enjoy.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-27/abbott-launches-5-minute-covid-19-test-for-use-almost-anywhere


Good News.

FH.

EDIT: W.H.O.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1APwq1df6Mw

Canada : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DGwOJXSxqg

INDIA.: EDIT.: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/india/

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HubJohns Hopkins University

WHAT WILL IT TAKE TO DEVELOP A VACCINE FOR COVID-19? Johns Hopkins global health expert Ruth Karron discusses the work currently taking place at laboratories around the country to develop a vaccine for COVID-19
Published March 26. 2020.

This week, the National Institutes of Health announced that Kaiser Permanente has begun the first clinical trial of a COVID-19 vaccine, called mRNA-1273. Scientists estimate that it will take at least one year to make a COVID-19 vaccine available to the general public.

To understand the steps required to develop, test, and produce a COVID-19 vaccine ready for usage, Sarah LaFave, a PhD candidate at the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, spoke with Ruth Karron, a professor in the Department of International Health at the Bloomberg School of Public Health. Karron is the founding director of the Johns Hopkins Vaccine Initiative and director of the Center for Immunization Research. Their conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

LaFave: Who is working on developing a COVID vaccine?
Karron: There are a number of groups working on vaccines—in academia, in biotech, in pharma. The developers are using new technologies which will allow for rapid development, but we also aren't sure yet how those new technologies will work. That's why it's important that we have multiple groups working on developing multiple vaccines.

Johns Hopkins responds to COVID-19 : Coverage of how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting operations at JHU and how Hopkins experts and scientists are responding to the outbreak

How far along are scientists toward having a COVID vaccine?
The first COVID vaccine was developed just four weeks after the first genetic sequence was available from China. The reason that was possible was in part because of investment by the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness and Innovation. CEPI is a global partnership set up three years ago, specifically with a mission "to stimulate and accelerate the development of vaccines against emerging infectious diseases and enable access to these vaccines for people during outbreaks." One of the things they have focused on is preparing for "Disease X," meaning some disease that would exist in the future which we didn't yet know about and for which we didn't yet have a vaccine. CEPI was founded to support the development of technology platforms that—no matter what the pathogen—could be used for rapid vaccine development. These technologies allow you to go from genetic sequence to vaccine without having to isolate the germ. COVID-19 is Disease X.

We're hearing about both a COVID vaccine and COVID antivirals. What's the difference and when do you think we will see a COVID vaccine or antiviral available to the general public?

That's really difficult to project. We will likely know if we have a vaccine within six to nine months but then the challenge will be to scale up production. Developing and testing a vaccine is different from developing, say, an antiviral which you would use to treat someone who has an infection. If you are giving an antiviral in a treatment trial for someone with COVID, you reach the endpoint very quickly—you look at the outcome for that patient immediately. But with a vaccine, you don't reach the endpoint immediately because you have to observe immune response over time, and for an efficacy study, have enough people naturally exposed to the virus to determine whether the vaccine prevents disease. That's why you will likely hear about results from COVID treatment studies before you will hear about results from COVID vaccine studies. There are also data coming out that suggest that different strains of COVID might exist. We don't yet know the biologic relevance of that, but it will be important to find out whether the vaccines and the antivirals are equally effective against all strains.

What are the key steps for bringing a vaccine to market?
First there's the creation of the vaccine itself. Often, the vaccine is next evaluated in animals, depending on the vaccine and the particular disease. Then, under oversight from regulators (the Food and Drug Administration in the U.S., and other regulatory bodies in other countries), institutional review boards (IRBs), and Data Safety and Monitoring Boards (DSMBs), the vaccine moves through phases of clinical testing, typically first in small numbers of healthy younger adults, and then in larger groups and broader age ranges, often including people with underlying conditions. The CDC has a useful brief guide to the phases of vaccine testing online.

"THERE ARE ASPECTS OF THE TRIALS THAT JUST CAN'T BE RUSHED. IT TAKES TIME TO DEVELOP AN IMMUNE RESPONSE TO THE VACCINE, AND IT ALSO TAKES TIME TO EVALUATE THE SAFETY OF THESE VACCINES."

Once a vaccine is shown to be safe and effective, bringing a vaccine to market is a complex effort that requires investment in manufacturing and distribution. In the coming months, we and others around the world will need to be thinking and acting to ensure that adequate investments are made, and will need to continue to collect and review data to determine who should be vaccinated, and when. You'll probably remember that with the 2009 flu pandemic, we didn't have enough vaccine available for everyone at once, so we prioritized vaccination based on risk. And of course this is a global disease—so we need to be thinking about issues of global equity and justice as we consider vaccine supply.

Is there a fast-track that can be taken during situations like the one we're in now?
We have fast-tracked vaccine development—getting from pathogen sequence to vaccine products available for clinical trials in a matter of weeks is a truly remarkable accomplishment. However, there are aspects of the trials that just can't be rushed. It takes time to develop an immune response to the vaccine, and it also takes time to evaluate the safety of these vaccines.

With that said, in an emergency situation, some stages of vaccine testing can be streamlined. How quickly you progress through the stages of vaccine evaluation will be influenced by the urgency of the problem. In the context of a pandemic, I know that we will move forward as safely and quickly as possible.

What is the most important thing for the general public to know about COVID vaccine development?
Vaccines are critical to halt the coronavirus pandemic—but they are not an overnight solution.

I also think it's important for people to understand that without investment in vaccine epidemic preparedness and technology, the rapid development of vaccines using novel platforms that is now underway wouldn't have been possible.

In 2015, Stanley Plotkin, Adel Mahmoud and Jeremy Farrar published a landmark article in the New England Journal of Medicine in which they called for the establishment of an organization like CEPI to support rapid vaccine development. Many of the vaccines that are in development for COVID-19 were made possible because researchers had seed funding for technologies that make rapid vaccine development possible. That funding came from CEPI before we ever knew COVID-19 would exist.

xxxx

FH.
https://hub.jhu.edu/2020/03/26/covid-19-vaccine-development-ruth-karron/

https://main.mohfw.gov.in/

SINCE WE DO NOT KNOW WHO HAS IT, IT IS BETTER TO KEEP A DISTANCE FROM EACH OTHER AND PLAY IT SAFE TILL IT ALL BLOWS OVER AND WE FEEL CONFIDENT TO MIX WITH FRIENDS AND SOCIALIZE. IT JUMPS FROM OUR SPEAKING AND BREATHING. SO, WEAR A MASK TO AVOID THE SPRAY AND SPREADING.

IN-SHORT STAY INDOORS AND STAY ALOOF. (IT COULD BE A THREE WEEK FURLOUGH.)

EDIT: 3rd APRIL 2020 W.H.O.

SUBJECT IN FOCUS: The routes of transmission from COVID-19 patients
As the COVID-19 outbreak continues to evolve, we are learning more about this new virus every day. Here we summarize what has been reported about the transmission of the COVID-19 virus, and provide a brief overview of available evidence on transmission from symptomatic, pre-symptomatic and asymptomatic people infected with COVID-19.

Symptomatic transmission By way of definition, a-symptomatic COVID-19 case is a case wherein one has developed signs and symptoms compatible with COVID-19 virus infection. Needs a Testing for the COVID 19 attack.

Symptomatic transmission refers to transmission from a person while they are experiencing symptoms. Data from published epidemiology and virologic studies provide evidence that COVID-19 is primarily transmitted from symptomatic people to others 'who are in close contact through respiratory droplets', by direct contact with infected persons, or by contact with contaminated objects and surfaces.

1-7 This is supported by detailed experiences shared by technical partners via WHO global expert networks, and reports and presentations by Ministries of Health. Data from clinical and virologic studies that have been collected repeated biological samples from confirmed patients provide evidence that shedding of the COVID-19 virus is highest in the upper respiratory tract (nose and throat) early in the course of the disease.

8-10 That is, within the first 3 days from onset of symptoms.

10-11 Preliminary data suggests that people may be more contagious around the time of symptom onset as compared to later on in the disease. Pre-symptomatic transmission.

The incubation period for COVID-19, which is the time between exposure to the virus (becoming infected) and symptom onset, is on average 5-6 days, this however can be up to 14 days. During this period, also known as the “pre-symptomatic” period, some infected persons can be contagious. (Due to poor health) Therefore, transmission from a pre-symptomatic case can occur before symptom onset. In a small number of case reports and studies, a pre-symptomatic transmission has been documented through contact tracing efforts and enhanced investigation of clusters of confirmed cases. 12-17 This is supported by data suggesting that some people can test positive for COVID-19 from 1-3 days before they develop symptoms.

6,16 Thus, it is possible that people infected with COVID-19 could transmit the virus before any significant symptoms develop. Hence, it is important to recognize that pre-symptomatic transmission still requires the virus to be spread via infectious droplets or through touching contaminated surfaces.

Asymptomatic transmission: An asymptomatic laboratory-confirmed case is a person infected with COVID-19 who does not develop symptoms. Asymptomatic transmission refers to the transmission of the virus from a person, who does not develop symptoms. There are few reports of laboratory-confirmed cases who are truly asymptomatic, and to date, there has been no documented asymptomatic transmission. This does not exclude the possibility that it may occur. Asymptomatic cases have been reported as part of contact tracing efforts in some countries. WHO regularly monitors all emerging evidence about this critical topic and will provide an update as more information becomes available.

F.H. Edited 3 Ap/20.