23 Mar 2020: UPSC Exam Comprehensive News Analysis

CNA 23rd March 2020:- Download PDF Here

TABLE OF CONTENTS

A. GS 1 Related
B. GS 2 Related
HEALTH
1. 80 districts in lockdown to contain virus spread
2. Lessons from Italy for the COVID-19-wracked world
3. Can China’s model work for the West?
C. GS 3 Related
ENVIRONMENT AND ECOLOGY
1. Air quality is picking up in quarantined countries
INTERNAL SECURITY
1. Seizure of Afghan meth on high seas triggers concern
D. GS 4 Related
E. Editorials
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
1. Picking up the quantum technology baton
HEALTH
1. The perils of an all-out lockdown
2. Stage by stage in a pandemic
F. Prelims Facts
1. Fish fossil show how fins evolved into human hands
G. Tidbits
1. Sunderbans’ honey hunters find a sweet way to fend off tiger attacks
2. Wild berry gets a new cousin in Assam, but the ‘Great Hedge of India’ faces threat
H. UPSC Prelims Practice Questions
I. UPSC Mains Practice Questions

2. Lessons from Italy for the COVID-19-wracked world

Context:

• The impact of COVID-19 pandemic in Italy.

Background:

• Italy has recorded more than 53,000 confirmed infections and more than 4,800 deaths due to COVID-19.
• The rate of increase is growing, with more than half the cases and fatalities coming in the last one week. Italy has now reported more deaths than mainland China and third-placed Iran combined, and it has a death rate of 8.6% among confirmed COVID-19 infections.

Details:

Complacency in Italy:

• In the critical early days of the outbreak, top officials sought to downplay the threat, creating confusion and a false sense of security that allowed the virus to spread.

Late and insufficient response by Italy:

• Despite currently having some of the toughest measures in the world, Italian authorities made some mistakes during the early stages of the epidemic, when it mattered the most.
• In its efforts to preserve basic civil liberties as well as the economy, Italy resorted to piecemeal attempts to impose social distancing. It went in for a gradual lockdown by isolating towns first, then regions, then shutting down the country.
• This gradual lockdown provided sufficient time for the epidemic to reach its third stage of community transmission.
• Despite the lockdown in place, the Italian government failed to communicate the threat powerfully enough to persuade Italians to abide by the lockdown rules, which itself had many loopholes.

Way forward:

• The tragedy unfolding in Italy should stand as a warning to the other nations which are facing the threat of a large outbreak.
• Italy’s experience shows that measures to isolate affected areas and limit the movement of the broader population need to be taken early, put in place with absolute clarity and strictly enforced.

3. Can China’s model work for the West?

Context:

• China’s efforts to contain the COVID-19 outbreak.

Details:

China’s progress in the fight against COVID-19:

• China has reported only one new local infection over the past four days which marks a remarkable success in the country’s effort to contain the initial outbreak in the city of Wuhan.
• World Health Organization chief has stated that China’s success in the battle with COVID-19 provides hope for the rest of the world.

China’s efforts:

Isolation efforts:

• In January 2020, China shut down Wuhan and placed its 11 million residents in effective quarantine and similar moves were replicated in the rest of Hubei province, putting 50 million people in mass isolation.
• Two weeks after the closure of Wuhan, which is exactly the incubation period, the number of infections started to drop.

 Strict social distancing regulations:

• Hundreds of millions of Chinese live in closed residential complexes where neighbourhood committees policed people’s movement, ensuring strict compliance of social distancing regulations. Isolation compliance could be closely monitored in such cases.
• In cities, it quickly became necessary to wear a mask as apartment blocks, businesses and even parks barred entry without one.
• The social distancing regulations, seems to have contributed to the decreasing number of new cases in China.

Use of technology:

• Many localities in China require citizens to show a QR code on their phone that rates them as “green”, “yellow” or “red”, based on tracking of whether they visited a high-risk zone.
• This helped in effective tracking of the movement of people and identifying at risk individuals and populations.

Public health over civil liberties:

• Given the nature of Chinese state, the state authorities were able to enforce stricter regulations without concerns over infringement of civil or privacy rights.

Mobilization of state resources:

• During the crisis, according to official news agencies, China produced up to 1.6 million N95 respirator masks per day, given its manufacturing prowess.
• The installation of temperature checkpoints at public buildings, shops and other public places helped boost detection rates.
• China was able to set up new hospitals in very short periods of time.

Challenges:

• China, being a centrally-controlled, top-down, one-party authoritarian state that allows no dissent and can mobilise vast resources on a single issue, is different from the other countries of the world.
• Given the particular features of Chinese state there are doubts whether China’s strategy can be followed successfully by other countries, particularly Western liberal democracies in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

Category: INTERNAL SECURITY

1. Seizure of Afghan meth on high seas triggers concern

Context:

• Seizure of crystal methamphetamine drug by the Sri Lankan Navy in international waters of the Indian Ocean.

Details:

Drug trade route in the Indian Ocean region:

• The Sri Lankan Navy operation has resulted in the country’s biggest drug haul at sea, with the seizure of 400 kg of heroin and 100 kg of crystal methamphetamine. Initial investigations suggested that the boats came from the Makran coast in Pakistan, with the drugs presumed to have originated in Afghanistan.
• Several seizures of Afghan-origin heroin in the high seas of the region have been made in the recent past. Heroin seizures are common in the region given that Afghanistan has traditionally been the hub of opium production, which is used in the manufacture of heroin.
  • The Golden Crescent region of South Asia—comprising Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan—is a principal global site for opium production and distribution.

Methamphetamine drug:

• Methamphetamine, also known as meth, crystal, glass, ice, speed and shards, is a potent central nervous system (CNS) stimulant that is mainly used as a recreational drug. In contrast, heroin is a depressant.
• Methamphetamine is much cheaper and highly addictive compared with other drugs like cocaine.
• Crystal meth has become a relatively common drug of abuse due to its ease of manufacturing. It is often made in home laboratories that use easily obtainable substances to produce it.

Concern:

Development of meth market:

• About a decade ago, there were barely any indicators of meth being in widespread use in Afghanistan, with minuscule amounts being reportedly seized. However, the recent seizure indicates the increasing production, use and outbound trade in meth in Afghanistan.
• The 2018 drought in Afghanistan, in which large tracts of opium crops were destroyed, triggered the move to chemical raw material based meth.
• The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) believes that many countries had reacted too late to the development of meth markets that allowed the market to establish itself.

Meth trade through well established routes:

• The seizure of 100 kg of methamphetamine has alarmed the drug enforcement agencies in India and other countries as it seems to indicate an emerging trend of meth being produced in Afghanistan smuggled out through an already well-established route for heroin trafficking to different parts of the world.

More complex challenges:

• It was observed in the Golden Triangle (the opium-producing area where the borders of Myanmar, Thailand and Laos meet) region that meth production rapidly transformed a plant-based narcotics challenge into a challenge of tracking large synthetic laboratories.
• This poses a more complex challenge given the fact that the detection of synthetic laboratories is more difficult for the security agencies.

Bulk production of meth:

• A worrying trend has been the increasing evidence of meth from Afghanistan, being produced in bulk using ephedrine extracted from a shrub locally known as Oman (Ephedra) growing in the wild in the Afghan mountains.
• This makes ineffective the regulations in place to control the trade in chemicals used as raw materials in the production of meth. The availability of the alternative raw material will only further stimulate production, trade and use of meth not only in the region but the world over.

Category: HEALTH

1. The perils of an all-out lockdown

Introduction

• A virus is a microorganism which is different from bacteria, in that they need a living host in order to reproduce.
• Viruses can survive outside their hosts, on surfaces such as bench tops, door knobs and bathroom taps, for hours or sometimes days (depending on the type of virus, and the type of surface). But they can’t reproduce outside the host.

What sort of virus is SARS-CoV-2?

• The virus is surrounded by a capsule that is covered in spikes, which bind to receptors.
• The capsule is made up of proteins and lipids, which is why frequently washing your hands with soap and water is so important as the soap can break the capsule and kill the virus.

As the novel coronavirus spreads, a double crisis looms over India: a health crisis and an economic crisis. The health crisis is class-neutral impacting both the rich and the poor, but the economic crisis hurts poor people the most. The economic crisis is throwing millions out of work by the day.

This economic crisis calls for urgent, massive relief measures

• Initial measures could include advance payment of pensions, enhanced PDS rations, immediate payment of MGNREGA wage arrears, and expanded distribution of take-home rations at schools and anganwadis.
• Public transport, administrative offices, court hearings, MGNREGA projects and even immunisation drives have already been suspended to varying degrees in many States. This may aggravate people’s hardships.
  • If a service creates a major health hazard, public purpose may certainly call for it to be discontinued (this is the reason for closing schools and colleges).
  • On the other hand, services that help poor people in their hour of need without creating a major health hazard should continue to function as far as possible.
    • That would apply not only to health services or the Public Distribution System, but also to many other public services including administrative offices at the district and local levels.
    • Poor people depend on these services in multiple ways, closing them across the board at this time would worsen the economic crisis without doing much to stem the health crisis.

Coordination the key

• Given India’s high population density and already stressed and under-resourced public health infrastructure, much more synchronisation will be required between healthcare institutions, research bodies and government agencies to prevent community transmission of the infection.
• This requires public health bodies and research outfits to be attentive to all signs on the ground, frame their responses accordingly and communicate the challenges posed by the virus to the people in a language they understand.

Conclusion

• Therefore, in the coming days and weeks, the Centre and state governments will have to find ways to mitigate people’s economic hardship while addressing public health imperatives.

Also read:

CNA Dated 21 March 2020

Additional Information:

2. Stage by stage in a pandemic

1. In the first stage of a disease epidemic that eventually takes the form of a pandemic sweeping the globe, cases are imported into a country in which the infection did not originate.
   • An infection whose spread is contained within the boundaries of one or a few countries is obviously not a pandemic. The first case of COVID-19 outside China was reported in Thailand.
2. The second stage is when the virus starts being transmitted locally.
   • Local transmission means that the source of the infection is from within a particular area and the trajectory the virus has taken from one person to the next is clearly established.
3. The third stage is that of community transmission. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), community transmission “is evidenced by the inability to relate confirmed cases through chains of transmission for a large number of cases, or by increasing positive tests through sentinel samples (routine systematic testing of respiratory samples from established laboratories)”.
   • In layman terms, it means that the virus is now circulating in the community, and can infect people with no history either of travel to affected areas or of contact with an infected person.
   • If and when community transmission happens, there might arise the need for a full lockdown because in that situation it is theoretically possible for every person, regardless of where they are from and who they have been in contact with, to spread the disease.
   • Among the countries where community transmission seems to be operating are China, Italy, Iran, South Korea and Japan.

How does categorizing an outbreak in this manner help?

• The stages of a pandemic are uniform the world over. This is so because in today’s interconnected world, it is important to have a standardised phraseology that conveys the same thing to every person around the world, and helps countries prepare better.
• The categorisation helps countries take specific actions that are necessary to target just that particular scenario.

Stage 3 will require citizens to exercise a greater degree of responsibility

• Social distancing will have to be accompanied by social solidarity and care for the more vulnerable sections.
• Employers will need to be even more sensitive towards their staff.
• Patients will need empathy, not stigmatisation.
• And the government, even as it is held accountable, will need support, as it introduces more measures to both battle the virus and introduce measures to minimise the distress.

Way forward

Three critical things need to be done.

• First, aggressive testing: This is to quickly detect and isolate sick patients and trace their contacts before they have a chance to spread the virus further.
  • The Indian Council of Medical Research is slowly changing protocols and bringing in the private sector to expand testing. This needs to be done urgently.
• Second, service readiness. India can prioritise hospital readiness by upgrading facilities — add beds and procure equipment. This will require the administration to reduce red tape and speed up expenditure.
• Third, human resource management. India doesn’t have enough doctors, but, in many parts of India, government MBBS doctors are under-utilised. These doctors can easily be redeployed to service clusters where outbreaks take place.
  • At the same time, community health workers (the one resource India has invested in over the last decade) can be trained with clear protocols and guidance to raise awareness, help patients navigate the health system, and seek appropriate care.
  • In the event of an outbreak, we need to ensure that only critical patients reach hospitals.

2. Wild berry gets a new cousin in Assam, but the ‘Great Hedge of India’ faces threat

• A new study has revealed that the multi-utility wild berry (Carissa carandas) has a related wild species in Assam (Carissa kopilii).
  • The Carissa kopilii is named after the river Kopili in central Assam.
• The Carissa carandas was also among several thorny plants the British had grown 140 years ago for a 1,100-mile barrier apparently to enforce taxes and stop the smuggling of salt.

Q1. Which of the following statement/s is/are correct?

Q2. The term Copernicus is associated with which of the following?

Q3. Which of the following statements is/are correct?

Q4. Which of the following statements is/are correct?

1. The National Mission on Quantum Technologies & Applications (NM-QTA) initiated by the Government is a step in the right direction promoting advanced research in quantum science. Discuss.
2. In the event of community transmission, explain how the health system will have to be ramped up to meet additional challenges.

Read the previous CNA here.

CNA 23rd March 2020:- Download PDF Here