Coronavirus pandemic | Food delivery platforms roll out measures to support the needy

Swiggy and Zomato chip in to feed the hungry and support restaurant cooks and servers that are out of a job due to the lockdown

Moneycontrol News

April 02, 2020 / 08:06 PM IST

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The food delivery industry has joined other startups in supporting the country and its citizens in their fight against novel coronavirus, or COVID-19.

Bengaluru-based Swiggy, which delivers food from more than 1.6 lakh restaurants across 520 cities, has kick-started an initiative to feed migrant workers who have been left jobless by the ongoing 21-day lockdown across the country.

The food ordering and delivery platform started the ‘Hope Not Hunger’ initiative in multiple cities. Till date, Swiggy has helped serve more than 2.5 lakh meals and is targeting to serve 5 lakh meals daily.

“These are challenging times for the service industry, including the food sector. There are restaurants that run the very real risk of shutting down permanently due to lack of business. This, in turn, has the potential to destroy the livelihoods of thousands of kitchen workers, cooks and support staff,” said Sriharsha Majety, CEO, Swiggy.

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COVID-19 Vaccine

Frequently Asked Questions

How does a vaccine work?

A vaccine works by mimicking a natural infection. A vaccine not only induces immune response to protect people from any future COVID-19 infection, but also helps quickly build herd immunity to put an end to the pandemic. Herd immunity occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. The good news is that SARS-CoV-2 virus has been fairly stable, which increases the viability of a vaccine.

How many types of vaccines are there?

There are broadly four types of vaccine — one, a vaccine based on the whole virus (this could be either inactivated, or an attenuated [weakened] virus vaccine); two, a non-replicating viral vector vaccine that uses a benign virus as vector that carries the antigen of SARS-CoV; three, nucleic-acid vaccines that have genetic material like DNA and RNA of antigens like spike protein given to a person, helping human cells decode genetic material and produce the vaccine; and four, protein subunit vaccine wherein the recombinant proteins of SARS-COV-2 along with an adjuvant (booster) is given as a vaccine.

What does it take to develop a vaccine of this kind?

Vaccine development is a long, complex process. Unlike drugs that are given to people with a diseased, vaccines are given to healthy people and also vulnerable sections such as children, pregnant women and the elderly. So rigorous tests are compulsory. History says that the fastest time it took to develop a vaccine is five years, but it usually takes double or sometimes triple that time.

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