The omnipresence of Omicron as we usher in 2022

02/01/2022 7 Comments read Features

By Neena Bhandari

The incisive eyes of a Powerful Owl were staring at me from the last page of the wall calendar. The days had melted into weeks and then months. 2021 had begun on a note of optimism, ignited by a promise of vaccines against the novel coronavirus, but that ray of hope has been eclipsed by the lengthening shadow of new mutations.

A more transmissible mutation — the Omicron (B.1.1.529) variant is surging unhindered as we usher in another year of living with SARS-CoV-2. The omnipresence of Omicron has dimmed New Year festivities and disrupted family reunions, just as we were hoping life would return to some form of normalcy.

Globally, on an average one million new coronavirus cases are being recorded daily. Public health systems have been stretched to a breaking point. Doctors, nurses, medical laboratory professionals, pharmacists, scientists and the innumerable health professionals have spent most part of their waking hours over the past two years helping the world cope with the pandemic.

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Students’ yearn return to school

13/10/2021 0 Comments read Education

Altamash and his brother being taught by their elder brother at their home in Delhi, India.

By Neena Bhandari

Sydney, 13.10.2021 (SciDev.Net): A “generational catastrophe” looms as government’s prioritise opening of malls overs schools, resulting in huge learning losses. As many as 117 million children globally are still affected by full school closures due to COVID-19 lockdowns, according to the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).

“You can’t open shopping malls and keep the schools closed,” UNESCO’s director of division for policies and lifelong learning systems Borhene Chakroun, tells SciDev.Net. “Governments have to take policy measures now to prevent a generational catastrophe in the future. They should reopen schools as soon as the sanitary situation allows and use closing them as the last resort.”

As of mid-September 2021, nine countries — Brunei Darussalam, Fiji, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, New Zealand, Pakistan, the Philippines and Sri Lanka — in the Asia Pacific region have fully closed their schools due to COVID-19, accounting for 105 million or 10 percent of total students. As many as 51 million are primary school students, according to UNESCO.

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Gender bias stymies women’s progress in STEM

11/02/2021 0 Comments read Gender, Health & Science

By Neena Bhandari

Sydney, 11.02.2021 (Scidev.Net): While women play a critical role in science and technology, women career scientists still face gender bias, accounting for only 28 percent of engineering graduates and 40 percent of graduates in computer science and informatics, according to UNESCO.

On the sixth UN International Day of Women and Girls in Science today, 11^th February, UNESCO has published one of the chapters on gender in science entitled To be Smart the Digital Revolution will Need to be Inclusive from the UNESCO Science Report scheduled for publication in April.

The chapter highlights that women are not benefitting fully from employment opportunities open to highly educated and skilled experts in cutting edge fields, such as artificial intelligence. Also, women founders of start-ups struggle to access finance, and in large tech companies they remain underrepresented in both leadership and technical positions.

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