Daily Current Affairs 2021: Check Latest Events & Facts for May 21

Current Affairs for May 21, 2021: Here aspirants will get the summarized events and facts incurring on daily basis for general awareness. The motive of this article is to help aspirants in preparation for competitive exams like; UPSC, UPPSC, SSC, Railway, IBPS etc.
 

COVID-19 Home Testing Kit 'COVISELF'

• Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has recently approved the country’s first COVID-19 self-testing kit manufactured by Mylab Discovery Solutions Ltd, Pune.
• The name of the self-testing kit is 'COVISELF', which constitutively means anyone can collect their own nasal sample and test it for SARS-CoV-2.
• With the help of this kit, people can collect a sample on their own and check the results within 15 minutes which would lead to prompt treatment and isolation on time.
• The cost of the 'COVISELF' kit is Rs.250/- which is economically cheaper than the RT-PCR test costs between Rs 400/- to 1,500/- and a rapid antigen test in the laboratory costs Rs 300/- to 900/- in different states.

 

Income Tax Department to Launch New e-filing Portal on June 7

• The Central Board of Direct Taxes, CBDT India has announced to launch a new e-filing portal for Income Tax on June 7, 2021.
• The objective of building a new tax e-filing portal is to provide a modern, seamless, and convenient experience to taxpayers of India.
• The existing online tax filing portal will demist from June 1 while all taxpayers and stakeholders would not be able to access the existing e-filing porta from June 1 to June 6, 2021.

 

Antibody Detection-based Kit DIPCOVAN

• Defence Institute of Physiology and Allied Sciences (DIPAS), a laboratory of DRDO has developed an antibody detection-based kit.
• The name of the kit is 'DIPCOVAN' which will help in detecting spike as well as nucleocapsid (S&N) proteins of SARS-CoV-2 virus.
• The kit would be commercially launched in June 2021, and each test would cost around ₹75.
• DIPCOVAN refers to DIPAS-VDx COVID-19 IgG Antibody Microwell ELISA for sero-surveillance. 
• Currently, Dr G Satheesh Reddy is the Secretary Department of Defence R&D & Chairman of DRDO.

 

Central Government to get ₹99,122 Crores Surplus from RBI

• Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has decided to transfer a surplus of ₹99,122 crores to the Central Government.
• The decision has been taken in the 589th meeting of the Central Board of Director under the chairmanship of RBI governor Shaktikanta Das.
• To reduce the adverse effect of COVID-19 pandemic, RBI will transfer 9 months (July 2020-March 2021) surplus of ₹99,122 crores to the Central Government.
• The RBI will also retain the Contingency Risk Buffer at 5.50%.

 

New Appointments

• Sun Pharma has appointed Pawan Goenka, former MD of Mahindra and Mahindra (M&M), and Management Consultant Rama Bijapurkar as additional independent directors of the company.
• Grant Thornton Bharat LLP national managing partner for tax Vikas Vasal has been appointed as the global tax head for Grant Thornton International Ltd.
• Ravi Shanker Gupta is appointed as the new chief financial officer (CFO)of Travel app ixigo.
• Online education (Edtech) firm Educational Initiatives has appointed Pranav Kothari as its chief executive officer (CEO).
• Ride-hailing company Ola has appointed Rakesh Bhardwaj as its group chief information officer.