The Nobel Foundation, which manages the prestigious Nobel Prizes, says it has canceled the traditional December banquet at the Stockholm City Hall due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Lars Heikensten, CEO of the Nobel Foundation, said it is not possible to gather up to 1,300 banquet guests and let them sit next to each other amid the current COVID-19 restrictions. He said the pandemic also makes it uncertain whether prize winners can travel to Sweden.
Pakistanis risk unproven plasma treatment in virus fight
Pakistanis with COVID-19 are risking their lives and navigating a shady black market to get blood plasma transfusions, despite scant medical proof about the remedy’s effectiveness.
Convalescent plasma treatment, where the antibody-rich part of the blood from a recovered patient is transfused to a coronavirus sufferer, is growing in popularity across Pakistan amid widely circulating claims of success on social media.
Like some other nations, Pakistan is conducting medical trials on the treatment, which has shown promising signs but is far from proven.
Almost a quarter of Delhi has had coronavirus
More than one in five people in Delhi have been infected with the coronavirus, according to a study, indicating that most cases in the Indian capital region have gone undetected.
The National Center for Disease Control tested 21,387 people selected randomly across Delhi, the state that includes New Delhi, and found that 23.48 percent had antibodies to the virus.
Adjusting for false positives and negatives, it estimated that 22.86 percent of the population had been infected by the virus, Dr. Sujeet Kumar Singh, who heads the institute, said in a news conference.
SOURCE: Al Jazeera and news agencies
