Institutes & Pharma Co Running a Race to Deliver COVID-19 Vaccine

Elisa Granato, Molecular Microbiologist of University of Oxford
was the first volunteer in the Oxford vaccine trial for COVID-19

As I joined my medical career in 2007, there was a different drug practice, and now it has changed a lot. My pharma textbook had mere 10 sentences on carbapenems but they became ubiquitous in present critical care units. For last 5 years (atleast) I saw a good number of drugs being approved by FDA, many of them are monoclonal antibodies (mab) for autoimmune diseases or for cancer treatment. I am not sure about their efficacy but I know these are not cheap! 

However as 2020 saw a pandemic of COVID-19 by beta coronavirus, I can see a race to deliver potential vaccine candidate to humankind is already started by educational institutes as well as pharma companies. 

Facebook Invests in Jio Platforms - Market to be Rattled?

At the end of April, 2020 Facebook announced it will invest Rs 43,574 crore ($ 5.6 billion) in Jio Platforms Ltd for 9.9% stake. This transaction marks largest foreign direct investment for a minority investment in India. Check Facebook announcement on their official post. During Covid-19 pandemic and lockdown, Ambani backed RIL did a great job which could indirectly help India's economy. 

The deal indicates Mark Zuckerberg, the man behind Facebook wants a pie in the digital marketplace of India. Because on the official post, there is a picture saying about a 50 year old company who is using Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp to reach new customers. 

For Facebook, Jio could be their protector in India, as Fb has regulatory issues back in 2016 with its Free Basics programs. Also Zuckerberg wants to enter e-commerce space, but Jeff Bezos owned Amazon holds lion's share in its domestic market. China could not be an option for Facebook where investment is tricky, competition with similar local offerings would be fierce, and state regulations are so strict and unethical at point. India is best option for Mark, as Indians are already heavily using his products - Fb, Insta and WApp. Known customers could give him better applause. 

Drugs Against CoViD-19

A BETTER POST CAN BE FOUND HERE

Til August 31st, 2020 there is no cure drug against Covid-19. Vaccines could be best to tackle this viral disease. I wrote down this post on April 24th, and I am actively updating this post. 

 

• Hydroxy-chloroquine (HCQS)

This old antimalarial and DMARD drug saw massive support from ICMR and US President Trump. People started taking it as prophylaxis without any proven benefit in prophylaxis. Trials in China also showed no proven benefit i.e. faster recovery with HCQS. In vitro studies showed that HCQS kills the virus. 

COVID-19 Updates - Virus Origin Story & Global and Indian Lockdown

Dunlop More, Kolkata during Lockdown
Photo source: internet/unknown

COVID-19 (Corona Virus Disease 2019) is a spectrum of diseases (of which worst case scenario is pneumonia and acute respiratory distress syndrome/ARDS) caused by novel corona virus/severe acute respiratory syndrome corona virus 2 (SARS-Cov2). As it turned into pandemic declared by WHO on March 11, 2020 (second after Swine Flu pandemic in 2009), it was first detected in Wuhan city of Hubei district of China by end of November 2019, and like many developing (and communist) countries, China ignored the early signs of epidemic and WHO was allowed for surveillance on January 8, 2020. 

Soon the COVID-19 started detecting in several other countries. So far worst hit countries are Italy, Spain, France, UK and USA. China is reporting negligible no. of new cases after March 15. 

Initially there were few conspiracy theories landed up, as SARS-CoV2 is a bioweapon made by China. However bioweapons like Anthrax does possess features like high infectivity, high virulence, non-availability of vaccines, and availability of an effective and efficient delivery system. That does not go with SARS-Cov2. But many say that China saw this outbreak back in August as they recovered so fast. And China did not inform it to the world, as the world suffers til date due to Covid-19. 

Bring Back 'Tab Menu' on Opera

In the middle of March, 2020 one of the Opera desktop update removed 'Tab menu' ['Show Closed Tab' on Vivaldi] from the left corner of the browser. It is pretty useful feature of Opera, as from here you can get the list of recently closed tabs. Note the plural - tabs! Yes you can get last 10+ tabs as list, which are closed recently.

Now this feature can be found as Menu > History > Recently Closed

With the removal of 'Tab menu' Opera brings 'Search in tabs' - that is useful if you open more than 50 tabs at once. You can't search the contents of the tabs from here.

Copy this link to address bar and ENTER : opera://flags/#search-in-open-tabs

Change Default to Disabled and you will get back old Tab Menu after the relaunch.

Global Lockdown due to Corona Virus (Cov-19) Outbreak

The world is not dominated by humans(as apparently seemed to be), that is proved again. We are now under attack by novel corona virus 2 (nCoV-2). Originated from Wuhan city of China by the end of November 2019, nCoV-2 is similar to SARS and MERS outbreak by coronavirus. 

On March 11, WHO declared this outbreak as pandemic. Soon the Covid-19 started detecting in several other countries. So far worst hit countries are Italy, Spain, France, UK and USA. 

India Got Two 5G Supported Smartphones in February 2020: Will You Buy it?

5G spectrum auction in India is yet to be a  reality but smartphone makers have started launching 5G/NR supported Android smartphone. Standing at 1st of March, 2020 we have iQoo 3 (12G/256G at Rs 44990) and realme X50 pro 5G (6G/128G at Rs 37999 and so on). 

Just get back to 2012, Airtel had launched 4G - it was limited to WiFi pocket routers. Even after 3 years when Jio started persuing its 4G dream, they had to create their own device ecosystem (LYF phones, JioFi and JioPhones). Embracing 4G/LTE was not easy. Operators did have to wait until 4G ecosystem evolved and became cheap for mass adaption. The Chinese companies like Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo took the opportunity and became the market leaders. That opportunity was lost by Indian handset manufacturers and their hard earned market was out of grip. 


Interestingly we have no 5G rollout in India right now and already two 5G phones are commercially launched by two relatively new companies making 5G as a USP for their flagship phones. It should be noted that companies have launched first of 5G phones under their sub brands - Realme with Oppo in background, while iQoo is a sub brand of Vivo. In few days Samsung, One Plus, Xiaomi, Asus and others will also launch 5G supported phones. 

But spending atleast Rs 5k - 12k extra for a technology not available in country does not make sense (note iQoo 3 has 2 variants. 4G & 5G phones have Rs 8k price difference, while all Realme x50 pro are 5G supported). First 5G dates are yet to be confirmed in the country as there is no deadline for 5G spectrum auction and cash deprived operators are not sure to spend money on a developing tech. Indian government will charge hefty for 5G spectrum, and at this moment only Jio is in the position to buy it. 

BSNL is still waiting for pan India 4G spectrum, and I doubt they will be given any 5G spectrum before the auction and the state own PSU may not accept it even if they were given as they also have to pay as per auction price. 

Secondly 5G radio are on higher bandwidth (therefore lesser penetration) and a population densed country like India may not take advantage of it unless operators put numerous base stations at one go (more than 10,000 BTS in every metro city). So you may not see sudden increase of speed with 5G like we saw during migration from 3G to 4G. Also unless you have many smart devices there will be no major use of 5G enabled Internet of Things (IoT). 

Thirdly we don't know anything about 5G spectrums in India. But these two smartphones have different 5G bandwidth support. iQoo 3 supports NR N41/N77/N78 while realme X50 pro 5G supports 5G NR N1/N41/N78/N79. N1 stands for 2100 MHz, N41 for 2500 MHz, N77 for 3700 MHz, N78 for 3500 MHz, N79 for 4700 MHz. All these bands are on FR 1 (frequency range 1). These phones do not support any of FR 2 bands of milimeter range (mmWave, between 24 - 100 GHz). 

In short 5G is being developed and even though 5G is getting global traction by the carriers it needs finetuning. As per GSMA report 5G adoption will be slower, expecting only 15% 5G users by 2025. However after the recent COVID-19 outbreak it could slower than expected. 

On my personal note, 5G will not be commercially available in India on mass scale before 2023. Before that global 5G market should be mature enough by infrastructure wise and ecosystem wise (like AI & IoT).

So the answer to the question of buying 5G phone right now by spending Rs 35k+ is NO. 

Why there is a price difference between 4G and 5G phones despite both having same SoC?

As we can see, Realme has given 5G support on all of its X50 Pro smartphones. But iQoo has same model with 4G and 5G variation with same Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 chipset. The price difference is due to addition of 5G modem on top of Snapdragon 865. Though it's not sure which of 5G modem added on these two smartphones, I expect it could be X55 modem which supports peak 5G speed at 7.5 Gbps, peak LTE speed at 2.5 Gbps and 5G Dual SIM support

Read more about 5G modems - Road to 5G: 4G/4.9G/5G Modems