visakhapatnam l saturday l november 21, 2020 l `7.00 l PAGES 12 l late city EDITION The UN health body said on Friday there’s no evidence that the drug improved the prospects of hospitalised patients May still benefit a subgroup of patients Experts divided over its effectiveness The new guidelines come a month after results of WHO’s multi-country Solidarity Trial revealed that the antiviral drug had no significant positive outcome on the chances of survival, the need for a ventilator, or the length of hospital stay in patients with severe Covid-19. The WHO, however, said there may still be a potential small benefit in a subgroup of patients ■  Axe remdesivir from covid treatment protocol: W.H.O. ■ Reactions to the WHO trial’s findings have been mixed with many health experts welcoming it while others expressing reservations A recent study by a group of doctors in Bengaluru found that the drug improved patients’ survival chances if given early. A US govtapproved study had also come out with a similar finding in April `24,000 The cost of a course of remdesivir treatment in India CHENNAI ■ MADURAI ■ VIJAYAWADA ■ BENGALURU ■ KOCHI ■ HYDERABAD ■ VISAKHAPATNAM ■ COIMBATORE ■ KOZHIKODE ■ THIRUVANANTHAPURAM ■ BELAGAVI ■ BHUBANESWAR ■ SHIVAMOgGA ■ MANGALURU ■ TIRUPATI ■ TIRUCHY ■ TIRUNELVELI ■ SAMBALPUR ■ HUBBALLI ■ DHARMAPURI ■ KOTTAYAM ■ KANNUR ■ VILLUPURAM ■ KOLLAM ■ WARANGAL ■ TADEPALLIGUDEM ■ NAGAPATTINAM ■ THRISSUR ■ KALABURAGI Door-to-door survey as Delhi ramps up response E x p r ess Ne w s S e r v i c e @ New Delhi Amid continuing surge in Covid-19 cases, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Friday sought to enforce pandemic discipline by meeting representatives of market associations and seeking their cooperation, while assuring he does not want to shut the markets down. He urged the representatives to provide masks for free to shoppers not wearing them. Parallelly, the gover nment sought to wield the stick, as it provided legal teeth to the penalty of a whopping `2,000 it intends to slap on those flouting the mask norm. To do so, Lt Governor Anil Baijal approved a proposal to amend the Delhi Epidemic Disease Management of Covid-19 Regulations 2020, to insert the penalty . Meanwhile, the Delhi government has begun a door-to-door survey to identify people having Active cases Covid symptoms. The massive exercise is expected to be completed in five days and cover over 57 lakh people. In all, 6,608 new cases were detected in Delhi that is already witnessing a third Covid wave, taking the cumulative cases to 5,17,238. Also, 118 deaths were reported in a 24-hour span. The air quality too continued to be poor with smog choking the Discharged Deaths 4,43,794 84,28,409 1,32,162 city’s lungs. Neighbouring Haryana recorded its highest single-day spike with 3,104 people testing positive. In Maharashtra, the fresh case count is now averaging 5,000 as compared to 2,0002,500 last week. Wary of a second wave, Mumbai’s schools and colleges will not open till Dec 31. They were earlier slated to reopen on Nov 23. With a steady uptick in fresh cases in Gujarat, night curfew has been imposed in Surat, Rajkot and Vadodara, in addition to Ahmedabad. Child care institutes in AP poorly equipped S G u r u S r i k a n t h @ Vijayawada Offering to the river Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy offers traditional clothes and pasupu kumkuma to the River Tungabhadra in Kurnool on Friday | Express Only 9.9% of the 730 Child Care Institutions (CCIs) in Andhra Pradesh have a child welfare officer, probation officer or caseworker, as per the Juvenile Justice Model Rules, 2016. This was revealed in the first-ever social audit of CCIs conducted by the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR). At the national level, 26.3% of CCIs have a child welfare officer, probation officer or caseworker. Further, only 37.7% of CCIs in Andhra Pradesh have counsellors, compared to 52% at the national level. Only 53% of CCIs in the State have a counsellor’s report or case history of each child, and only 66% have initial reports of interaction with the children. P5 High risk of child abuse Only 60% of CCIs have measures to prevent physical/ emotional abuse of children that results in mental or physical pain or discomfort. Only 58% are subjected to inspections by inspection committees RBI open to letting large companies own banks Regulator feels private lenders will drive future growth; wants to expand banking sector after strengthening supervisory oversight S es a S e n @ New Delhi It is time to open up India’s banking sector to allow large companies to own banks, according to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). In its report released Friday, an internal RBI panel headed by RBI Central Board Director P K Mohanty said industrial houses can be allowed to promote banks after the Banking Regulations Act is amended to this effect. The supervisory wing of the regulator must also be strengthened to prevent connected lending and exposures between banks and other financial and non-financial group entities, the internal group report noted. The suggestions are significant as the central bank has in the past been firmly opposed to allowing large corporate entities to own banks. The working group also suggested that large nonbanking financial companies (NBFCs) with asset size of `50,000 crore and above, in- cluding those owned by corporate entities, be converted into banks subject to completion of 10 years of operations. This could benefit industrial houses such as Aditya Birla, Bajaj, Mahindra & Mahindra and Tata Sons that already have large NBFCs with more than a decade of operations. Back in the 1990s, when RBI doled out its first set of licences for private banks, it had left out industrial houses. However, the P K Mohanty panel, whose brief was to review the extant ownership guidelines and corpo- Higher promoter stake l Promoters’ stake be raised to 26% from the current 15% over 15 years, the report suggested l It also recommended minimum initial capital requirement for licensing new banks be doubled to `1,000 crore for universal banks and enhanced to`300 crore from `200 cr for small finance banks rate structure for Indian private sector banks, said private banks will be crucial for the future growth of the banking sector, which is currently dominated by gover nment-owned lenders. Fourteen licences for universal banks have been issued in the private sector since 1993, out of which only 10 are operational now. While private banks recorded sustained growth over the years, there’s a long way to break into the global top 100. Currently only the govern, ment-owned State Bank of India figures among the top 100 global banks by size. Large private banks including ICICI Bank and HDFC Bank have sizes lower than that of Spanish Banco de Sabadell, which ranks 100th. RBI has sought comments from stakeholders on the internal group’s report by January 15, 2021, after which it will P10 take a final call.  `74K CR TAX SIPHONED OUT: P9