JAB-O-METER TAKE YOUR SHOT Jan 17 68,95,050 doses Jan 18 65,85,945 doses TOTAL DOSES 1,58,74,38,750 NATIONWIDE JAN 17 JAN 18 Fresh cases 2,58,089 2,38,018 Recoveries 1,51,740 1,57,421 Deaths 385 310 KARNATAKA JAN 17 JAN 18 Fresh cases 23,433 41,457 Recoveries 7,827 8,353 Deaths 14 20 KALABURAGI  WEDNESDAY  JANUARY 19, 2022  `9.00  PAGES 12  CITY EDITION DATA SHOW OMICRON SPREAD WILL END PANDEMIC: EXPERT ‘IN 2022, LIFE CAN BE LIKE IT WAS BEFORE COVID’ Year 2022 will mark the end of the pandemic, according to Prof Julian Hiscox, chairman in infection and global health at the University of Liverpool. With Omicron, there will ``be ‘natural immunity’ on top of vaccination, which will lead to a scenario of endemicity, he said. Endemicity means though the virus spread will continue, its severity will come down to easily manageable levels If you were wondering how long will the coronavirus pandemic go on, you won’t have to wait much longer, says a UK virologist ■ 55 lakh TOO EARLY TO CALL IT, SAYS FAUCI ■ However, not all experts are as optimistic as Hiscox. Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser to the US president, says it’s too early to say if Omicron will mark the end of the pandemic “It is an open question as to whether or not Omicron is going to be the live virus vaccination everyone is hoping for,” he said | P7 COVID DEATHS REPORTED WORLDWIDE SO FAR, ACCORDING TO W.H.O. DATA CHENNAI ■ MADURAI ■ VIJAYAWADA ■ BENGALURU ■ KOCHI ■ HYDERABAD ■ VISAKHAPATNAM ■ COIMBATORE ■ KOZHIKODE ■ THIRUVANANTHAPURAM ■ BELAGAVI ■ BHUBANESWAR ■ SHIVAMOGGA ■ MANGALURU ■ TIRUPATI ■ TIRUCHY ■ TIRUNELVELI ■ SAMBALPUR ■ HUBBALLI ■ DHARMAPURI ■ KOTTAYAM ■ KANNUR ■ VILLUPURAM ■ KOLLAM ■ TADEPALLIGUDEM ■ NAGAPATTINAM ■ THRISSUR ■ KALABURAGI ED raids Punjab CM Channi’s nephew Seizes `6 crore cash and property documents in connection with 2018 illegal sand mining case EXPRESS NEWS SERVICE @ Chandigarh / New Delhi EXPRESS READ FM launches attack on Cong over Devas deal New Delhi: The government will use the Supreme Court order calling the 2005 deal between ISRO’s commercial arm Antrix and privately-owned Devas Multimedia a fraud, to counter seizure of its properties, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Tuesday as she launched a blistering attack on Congress. Vijay Mallya to be evicted from home New Delhi: A UK court on Tuesday ordered enforced possession of Vijay Mallya’s multi-million-pound luxury home in London. Swiss bank UBS will now take possession of the luxury townhouse, 18/19 Cornwall Terrace, which overlooks Regent’s Park in London. THE Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Tuesday conducted raids at multiple places in Punjab, including the residence of Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi’s nephew Bhupinder Singh alias Honey, in connection with an illegal sand mining case in the poll-bound border state. The searches covered a dozen locations including Chandigarh, Mohali, Ludhiana and Pathankot. ED sleuths recovered cash worth `6 crore, including `4 crore from premises linked to Channi’s nephew, and some property documents during the searches, sources said adding that the central agency will take action under the provisions of the Prevention of Mann is AAP’s CM face AAP on Tuesday declared its Punjab unit chief Bhagwant Mann as CM candidate, saying 93% of respondents picked him in a poll in which people phoned in or sent messages indicating their choice | P8 Money Laundering Act (PMLA). The raids were related to an illegal sand mining case registered by Punjab police in 2018. Later, charges of cheating were added to the FIR and subsequently the ED took over the investigation. The name of one Kudratdeep Singh surfaced during preliminary probe. During detailed interrogation, he revealed that Bhupinder Singh was the main facilitator, sources said. The ED is now probing if the chief minister’s name was used to facilitate illegal mining, they added. Reacting sharply to the raids, the Congress accused the Centre of trying to defame Punjab, adding that such acts will not hurt the ruling party’s electoral prospects in the state. Channi alleged the Centre is using the federal agency to target political opponents. He said actions of the central probe agencies have become predictable as they follow the same pattern during every poll season. After quitting the Congress, former Punjab CM Capt Amarinder Singh had publicly alleged that many Congress leaders were involved in illegal sand mining. Blast on navy ship kills 3 personnel Health Dept to keep eye on dists with high TPR E X P R E S S N E W S S E R V I C E @ New Delhi AN explosion onboard a Navy ship at the Mumbai port killed three personnel and left over 10 others injured. The injured personnel are being treated in local hospitals. The blast happened in an internal compartment of INS Ranvir. “In an unfortunate incident on Monday at Naval Dockyard Mumbai, three naval personnel succumbed to injuries caused by an explosion in an internal compartment onboard INS Ranvir,” the Navy said in a statement. However, there was no major material damage, the statement added. The ship’s crew brought the situation under control. INS Ranvir was on cross coast operational deployment from the Eastern Naval Command from November 2021 and was due to return to its base port shortly . A Board of Inquiry has been ordered to investigate the cause. A Rajput Class Destroyer, INS Ranvir was built in Russia and inducted in the Indian Navy in 1986. Serious accidents onboard Indian Navy ships have reported in the past. For example, in 2014, a fire in the third compartment of INS Sindhuratna had killed two officers. Two years later, two sailors died and 14 others were injured when INS Betwa crashed on its side while it was undocking in Mumbai. C H E TA N A B E L A G E R E @Bengaluru WHILE the Covid peak in the state is expected to be on January 25, the state health department has kept a watch on six districts to ensure that cases do not surge drastically and eight other districts where there is an urgent need to prepare hospital infrastructure as the Test Positivity Rate (TPR) in some of these districts is 30 per cent which is almost double the state average. The state war room data shows that Kalaburagi (20.56%), Chikkamagaluru (19.56%), Udupi (19.26%), Ballari (19.17%), Bengaluru Rural (18.91%) and Davanagere (18.28%) are under the department’s radar. Raichur, Chikkaballapur, Koppal, Chamarajanagar and Kodagu are under watch as they have shown an increased TPR over the last 15 days, indicating that the surge witnessed in Bengaluru is spreading to other districts. Though hospitalisation in the ongoing third wave has been low, health experts fear that a higher growth rate for a longer period will eventually overwhelm the health infrastructure like in the second wave. CONTINUED ON: P3 GOVT WARNS DOCS OF ACTION Bengaluru: The Karnataka government on Tuesday warned some medical practitioners of action for allegedly spreading misinformation on Covid. Such misinformation leads to confusion among the public, the govt said. K’TAKA TOPS LIST IN COUNTRY Bengaluru: Karnataka reported the highest number of Covid cases in the country on Tuesday. The state reported a massive increase of 52%, recording 41,457 cases. 2 cops held extorting peddlers near CM’s house M G C H E TA N @Bengaluru TWO policemen, who tried to strike a deal with drug peddlers while on duty at the Chief Minister’s residence, were arrested by the RT Nagar police recently. The policemen attached to the Koramangala police station were allegedly demanding money from a drug peddler for not booking him. Head Constable Shivakumar and Police Constable Santhosh are the arrested policemen. The alleged incident took place outside CM Basavaraj Bommai’s private residence in RT Nagar, on January 13 evening. The police said that a resident of the locality alerted the police control room about suspicious activity in an autorickshaw parked near the CM’s residence around 6.30 pm. A Hoysala patrolling vehicle rushed to the spot and found two people sitting in the rickshaw and two men in police uniform talking to them. When the Hoysala staff enquired, the policemen claimed that they received information that the other two were drug peddlers and were questioning them. P5 ‘Electric vehicle hub’ Karnataka woos Musk E X P R E S S N E W S S E R V I C E @Bengaluru TOP SEER Krishnapura Mutt seer Sri Vidhyasagara Theertha Swami, who ascended the ‘Sarvajna Peeta’ on Tuesday and became the new Paryaya Peetadhipathi, being taken on a palanquin as part of Paryaya celebrations in Udupi | EXPRESS JOINING a growing list of states wooing Tesla’s billionaire CEO Elon Musk to start a manufacturing unit, Karnataka on Tuesday projected itself as the “Electric Vehicle (EV) hub” of the country and an ideal destination to set up such a plant. Many states, including Telangana, West Bengal, Maharashtra, Punjab and Tamil Nadu, have invited Musk to set up shop. “With over 400 R&D centres, 45+ EV startups and an EV cluster near Bengaluru, Karnataka has emerged as EV hub of India. Mr @elonmusk, Karnataka would be an ideal destination to set up @Tesla plant. Bengaluru is already Tesla’s maiden address in India,” Karnataka Minister for Large and Medium-Scale Industries Murugesh R Nirani tweeted. Musk had recently tweeted, “Still working through a lot of challenges with the government,” in reply to a Twitter user, who asked: “Yo @elonmusk any further update as to when Tesla’s will launch in India? They’re pretty awesome and deserve to be in every corner of the world!” P4 Mid-air collision of two aircraft averted at KIA S L A L I T H A @Bengaluru A mid-air collision involving two Indigo domestic passenger flights was narrowly averted at the Kempegowda International Aircraft (KIA) recently What is . worse is that the incident was neither recorded in the logbooks nor was it reported by the Airports Authority of India to the country’s aviation regulator, both of which are mandatory . It was the lack of communication among controllers at the Air Traffic Control room that was responsible for the incident that occurred around 8.45 am on January 7. Directo-General of Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA).Arun Kumar told TNIE that Flight No. 6E 455 heading from Bengaluru to Kolkata and Flight No. 6E 246 on the way from Bengaluru to Bhubaneswar we re i nvo l ve d i n `breach of separation’ at Bengaluru airport. “Put simply, this technical term refers to a situation where sufficient distance was not maintained between two flights either laterally or vertically which is an alarming situation,” explained a senior pilot. Kumar said both the North Runway (for departures) and South Runway (for arrivals) were in use at KIA in the morning of the incident. “Later, the shift in-charge decided to go in for single runway operations and opted to make use of the North Runway for both arrivals and departures. The South Runway was closed but that was not communicated to the Controller in the South Tower. As a result, he gave the green signal for the flight to Kolkata to depart, while the North Tower controller permitted the flight to Bhubaneswar to depart. There was no coordination between them.” ‘Consequences could have been severe’ An aviation expert said a breach of separation incident could have serious consequences. “The impact can range from mild scratches to the flights to a headon collision. Many upgraded systems are in place to ensure such incidents never happen,” he said. Stay relaxed and tension free Diversifying your investments across asset classes helps to mitigate the impact of market fluctuations. In a world of uncertainties, asset allocation is critical. Thankfully, various categories of hybrid schemes - investing in a combination of asset classes, provide a convenient route to asset allocation and keep tension away! 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