# Stimulus post 2nd Covid wave

• Finance minister Nirmala sitharaman on monday announced some fresh relief measures for the economy.

• This is the first such package after the second covid-19 wave, focusing largely on extending loan gurantee and concessional credits for pandemic hit sectors.

• Finance minister Nirmala sitharaman announced an expansion of the existing emergency credit line gurantee scheme by 1.5 lakh crore rupees.

# New oxford study

• A new report has been published by oxford vaccine group, the developers of the vaccine on monday.

• According to this report, two doses of the Astrazeneca vaccine, administered 44-45 weeks apart, generated nearly four times the level of antibodies than when the doses were given 8-12 weeks apart.

• Thus, average IgG (Immunoglobulin G) levels for 8-12, 15-25 and 44-46 weeks were 923, 1860 and 3728 units respectively, when measured 28 days after the second dose.

# Assam population control

• Assam CM Himanta biswa sharma, who has cracked down on the drug trade since taking charge on may 10, said disincentives should balance incentives in the government’s approach to population control.

• Muslim population in Assam has been growing at 29% and Hindus are growing at just 10%.

• This means there will be a lot of poverty and illiteracy among muslims.

# European union green pass

• European union has excluded the Covishield from its list of vaccines which are acceptable to get a green pass to enter the european union.

• Although, covishield has been made by the same formula created by Astrazeneca, which is also used in EU countries but with a different name.

• European medicines agency (EMA) said that as vaccines are biological products, even tiny differences in the manufacturing conditions can result in a difference in final product. So, covishield has not been approved.

# Co-WIN

• India will soon provide an open source version of its Co-WIN application to nearly 50 countries from central asia, Africa and Latin America.

• Co-WIN is an extension of an electronic vaccine intelligence network, eVIN, which is used to collect real time feedback of the vaccination programmes.

• It is a cloud based IT solution for planning, implementing, monitoring and evaluating covid-19 vaccination in the country.

# Disinvestment target

• Chief economic advisor Krishnamurthy Subramaniam has expressed confidence that the 1.75 lakh crore rupees disinvestment target of this fiscal will be achieved.

• Major part of this disinvestment will be coming from the proposed IPO of insurance behemoth LIC and privatisation of BPCL.