WHAT'S HAPPENING?
❗️WHAT: The World Health Organisation (WHO) is investigating the mysterious rise in severe cases of hepatitis in children around the world. Cause still unknown, the disease has infected at least 190 children across twelve countries, including the US, UK and Spain.
🥀 One child has died of the disease in Murica, Spain. 17 children have needed liver transplants, per the WHO.
👉 WHAT WE KNOW: Children as young as 18 months and as old as 16 have been diagnosed with sudden, severe hepatitis. Severe hepatitis, or inflammation of the liver is rare in otherwise healthy children.
🇬🇧 The outbreak was first reported this month in Britain, which has registered 111 cases, mostly in children under 10.
🦠 Unusually, the new cases do not feature the viruses typically responsible for acute liver inflammation – hepatitis A, B, C, D and E. The common cold virus, known as adenovirus, has been detected in at least 74 cases. In the UK and Netherlands, there has been a significant increase in overall adenovirus infections, following low levels of circulation prior to the Covid-19 pandemic.
🤔 WHAT WE DON'T KNOW: Whether there has been an increase in hepatitis cases, or an increase in awareness of hepatitis cases occurring at the expected rate but not being detected. No discernible pattern or connection has been found between patients.
🧫 WORKING THEORIES: Doctors and scientists say it could be that children's reduced exposure to pathogens during the Covid-19 lockdowns is causing an adenovirus, that doesn't otherwise cause liver inflammation, to do exactly that. Or the culprit could be a yet undiscovered infection or a novel adenovirus strain with altered characteristics.
👶 Experts are also investigating if children who would normally have been infected with minimal symptoms as babies are having more severe reactions to the viruses now that they are older.
❗️ON THE RECORD: "I find this absolutely extraordinary. I've not come across anything like this in my clinical practice. It's worrying because we don't know what's going on."—William Irving, Professor of Virology at the University of Nottingham to DW
SPARE CHANGE
📣 Twitter has accepted Elon Musk’s offer to take over the company for $54.20 per share or around $44 billion.
💰 This purchase price is a 38% premium to Twitter's closing stock price on April 1, 2022, which was the last trading day before Musk disclosed his approximately 9% stake in Twitter.
🗓 The social media giant had initially declined Musk’s shock bid two weeks ago, but will now ask shareholders to vote to approve the deal.
⏳ Upon completion of the transaction (tentatively this year), Twitter will become a privately held company—the largest deal of its kind in roughly two decades.
SHOTS FOR KIDS
💉 WHAT: India’s drug regulator has given restricted emergency use approval to three Covid-19 vaccines for children.
📌 WHICH ONES: Covaxin for children aged between 6 and 12, Corbevax for the 5-12 age group and two-dose ZyCoV-D for those aged 12 and above.
✏️ NOTES:
1️⃣ Though Corbevax has been approved for kids aged five and above, the government is yet to green light vaccination for this age group. When it does, vaccines will be ready.
2️⃣ The three-dose ZyCov-D vaccine is already a part of India’s immunisation program, for children aged 12 and above.
3️⃣ All three vaccines approved today can only be administered to those children who are in dire need of it based on their medical condition and doctors’ discretion.
BLAST INSIDE KARACHI UNIVERSITY
🇵🇰 WHAT: Days after a change in leadership, a bomb blast inside Karachi University, in the heart of the Pakistan’s industrial and financial hub.
🥀 WHO: Four people have died, including three Chinese nationals. The van was carrying seven to eight lecturers; an exact number of casualties is still not known.
📌 WHO: The Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), a separatist group, claimed responsibility for the attack, also adding that it was carried out by a female suicide bomber—a first for the group.
🇨🇳 RELATED: Chinese nationals have often been targets of terror attacks by separatist groups, despite (or because of) China’s staunch support of the Pakistani government.
🗓 2019—Gunmen gunmen stormed a luxury hotel overlooking a flagship China-funded project, killing at least eight people.
🗓 July 2021—An IED attack on a bus carrying Chinese engineers in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa killed at least 13 people, include nine Chinese nationals.
🗓 April 2021—Bomb blast at a hotel in Quetta hosting the Chinese ambassador, killed four people.
BACK BURNER
🖊 ON THE RECORD: “The CAA is a limited and narrowly tailored legislation which seeks to provide a relaxation to aforesaid specific communities from the specified countries with a clear cut-off date. It is a compassionate and ameliorative [to make more tolerable] legislation.”
🇮🇳 WHO: Home Ministry in its 2020-21 annual report.
🎙 WHAT ELSE: The government also wrote—
✍️ CAA does not alter the legal position of the Citizenship Act, 1935, which lays down the process of acquiring Indian citizenship by foreigners, and is currently in place.
🖊CAA does not apply to Indian citizens and does not take away any citizen’s rights
🗓 FYI: CAA was enacted in 2019, but is yet to be implemented. It aims to grant citizenship to those members of the Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi and Christian communities who faced persecution in Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan.
✊🏾 Its enactment triggered pan-India protests by those who saw the law as unconstitutional, granting citizenship to people of all faiths, barring Muslims.
RELATED
HATRED, ON SIMMER
🏗 11 days after the administration had began demolishing properties belonging to the people accused in the communal violence that had broken out in Gujarat's Anand district on April 10, demolitions took place in Himmat nagar city, which also saw similar violence that day.
🙃 The Supreme Court has asked the Uttarakhand government to ensure that no hate speech is delivered at a “dharam sansad” scheduled in Roorkee city tomorrow. When the government said it could not predict what would be said at such events, the court said, "But if it is by the same [accused] person, then you have to prevent it. Don't make us say things."
📕 The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights has sought an inquiry against a Bengaluru school for allegedly making Bible studies compulsory for students. The state is working on making the Bhagavad Gita a part of the syllabus.
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