COVID 19: A PANDEMIC
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Answer:
On 11 March 2020, WHO declared Novel Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) outbreak as a pandemic and reiterated the call for countries to take immediate actions and scale up response to treat, detect and reduce transmission to save people’s lives.
WHO Country Office for India support
Speaking to WHO personnel who are based in all states/UTs in India, via video conference in April 2020, Dr Harsh Vardhan, Union Minister for Health & Family Welfare said, “WHO is an important partner in our fight against the COVID-19. I really value guidance and contributions made by the WHO in containing spread of COVID-19 across the country.” The WHO Country Office for India (WCO India) has been working closely with the Government of India (GoI) to step-up preparedness and response measures for COVID-19, including surveillance and contact tracing, laboratory testing, risk communications and community engagement, hospital preparedness, infection prevention and control, and implementation of containment plan at all three levels of the health system – national, state and district. The entire field presence, including the National Public Health Surveillance Project, consisting of more than 2000 personnel has been fully re-purposed to support the government to overcome this challenge.
At the national level, WCO India is providing technical support to the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare (MoHFW) through the Joint Monitoring Group (JMG) and working closely with National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), National Disaster Management Authority and NITI Aayog. WHO teams are also supporting National and State Governments in ensuring essential health services such as immunisation, reproductive maternal newborn child and adolescent health (RMNCAH), non-communicable diseases and priority communicable diseases are available.
Answer:
ow far the group’s average score on skills were at the end of the year from their skill levels at the beginning of a year comparable across studies, we use standard deviations). On average, students advance in their academic performance by between about 0.3 standard deviations (SD) and 0.5 SD to 0.7 SD per year, depending on their age and subject/skill (OECD 2009; own analysis based on NCES 2010–2011).3 The 2019–2020 school year was cut by at least one third relative to its normal length, which, assuming linear increments in growth over the year and no major other obstacles, suggests a loss of at least 0.1 SD across the board, and larger in earlier grades. These benchmarks will be helpful as we look at the various ways that students have seen their learning interrupted and disrupted this year, and they will continue to do so in 2020–2021.
It is useful as well to examine the research on the length of the school day, which has identified a causal relationship between the amount of (high-quality) instructional time and student performance (Figlio, Holden, and Özek 2018; Goodman 2014; Kidronl and Lindsay 2014; Jin Jez and Wassmer 2013; Marcotte and Hansen 2010). Challenges, though, arise in most evaluations because it is difficult to disentangle the effects of the length of the school day from the effects of starting the school day earlier, or switching to a four-day school week, or to year-round instruction.4