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INDIA

Nestlé’s CEO Bulcke: Maggi noodles are ‘safe’

Nestlé chief Paul Bulcke said on Wednesday that he wanted to see its hugely popular Maggi brand of instant noodles back on the Indian market as soon as possible after it was banned over a health scare.

Nestlé's CEO Bulcke: Maggi noodles are 'safe'
Nestlé CEO Paul Bulcke. Photo: AFP

India's food safety regulator on June 5th banned the product after tests that it said showed the noodles contained excessive levels of lead.
   
“The only thing that interests me is to have the product back as soon as possible and that things are cleared up,” he told AFP in an interview while visiting the Milan expo.
   
“We are doing all we can to make contact with Indian authorities at the earliest,” he said, adding: “The product is safe.”
   
Asked about the possible impact of the ban on jobs in India, he said production would resume “if we can resolve this fast.”
   
On Monday, the Swiss food giant said that the ban had led to 3.2 billion rupees ($50.5 million) worth of goods being withdrawn.
 
 A Nestlé spokesman said it was the biggest ever withdrawal of a product by the company.

The world's biggest food company is challenging the June 5th order from the government's food safety regulator and is in the process of destroying more than 27,000 tonnes of Maggi noodles after halting production.
   
The company had already announced it was pulling the product from sale when the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India imposed a ban following similar moves by some state governments.
   
Nestlé does not give a breakdown of sales per brand but Jon Cox, an analyst at Kepler Cheuvreux, put it at around three billion Swiss francs a year.
   
The safety scare is a huge blow to the company, which has been selling its Maggi products for more than three decades in India, and has 80 percent of the country's instant noodle market.
   
Maggi scored as one of India's five most trusted brands in a consumer survey conducted last year.
   
Several celebrities have endorsed Maggi over the years, including Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan.

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INDIA

Travel: Spain imposes mandatory quarantine on arrivals from India over virus strain fears

Spain will make all travellers arriving from India undergo a 10-day quarantine to prevent the potential spread of the Asian country’s coronavirus variant within the Spanish territory.

Travel: Spain imposes mandatory quarantine on arrivals from India over virus strain fears
Photo: JACK GUEZ/AFP

Spanish government spokesperson María Jesús Montero made the announcement on Tuesday, explaining that as there are no direct flights between Spain and India, it isn’t possible for Spain to adopt measures such as banning arrivals outright as other European countries have done.

The quarantine requirement for travellers arriving to Spain from India starts on May 1st 2021.

India joins a number of South American and African nations that are already on Spain’s quarantine list to stem the spread of the Brazilian and South African variants. 

According to the Spanish government’s website, those “coming from the Federative Republic of Brazil, the Republic of South Africa, Republic of Botswana, Union of Comoros, Republic of Ghana, Republic of Kenya, Republic of Mozambique, United Republic of Tanzania, Republic of Zambia, Republic of Zimbabwe, Republic of Peru and Republic of Colombia, must remain in quarantine for 10 days after their arrival in Spain, or for the duration of their stay if it is shorter than that. This period may end earlier, if on the seventh day the person is tested for acute infection with negative results.”

India is currently battling a record-breaking rise in Covid-19 infections that has overwhelmed hospitals and led to severe bed and oxygen shortages.

A key question is whether a new variant with potentially worrying mutations – B.1.617 – is behind what is currently the world’s fastest-growing outbreak, setting four records in a row for the highest daily coronavirus infections by one country, the latest on Sunday with 349,691 new cases.

The country has also been recording around 3,000 deaths per day from Covid-19. 

Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Italy and the Netherlands have all imposed restrictions or travel bans on arrivals from India in recent days.

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“No cases of the Indian variant have been detected to date to my knowledge,” Spain’s Emergencies Coordinator Chief Fernando Simón told journalists on Monday. 

“The intel does not indicate that we have to worry about it,” he added, given that the UK variant now makes up 94 percent of all infections in Spain. 

“We cannot rule out that a case (of the Indian variant) may be detected”, Simón admitted, but “so far it is not a variant of concern, it is a variant of interest”.

Patients breath with the help of oxygen masks inside a banquet hall temporarily converted into a Covid-19 coronavirus ward in New Delhi on April 27th, 2021. (Photo by Money SHARMA / AFP)

That is not a view shared by Amós José García Rojas , president of the Spanish Association of Vaccinations (AEV), who argues “we have to worry a lot” about the “chaos” that this new variant is leaving in the Asian country and why it could affect the spread of this strain of the virus.

“This new variant is fundamentally worrying because of what it is causing in India,” Rojas told medical publication Redacción Médica. 

“It shows that as there are territories where people are largely not vaccinated, there’s many people who are susceptible to the virus and it creates a breeding ground for the development of new variants”.

“We cannot vaccinate comprehensively in some countries and forget about other countries at the mercy of God.

“We have to worry about everyone because there is a risk that situations like the one seen in India will happen again. 

So far, the B.1.617 variant has been categorised by the World Health Organisation as a “variant of interest”.

Other variants detected in Brazil, South Africa and the UK have been categorised as “of concern”, because they are more transmissible, virulent or might reduce antibody efficacy.

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