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Coronavirus pandemic: Mumbai startup Riskcovry launches new insurance cover

Launched with Religare, the new product covers medical expenses and also wage loss during quarantine.

March 25, 2020 / 13:45 IST
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Mumbai-based insurtech startup Riskcovry, in partnership with health insurance company Religare, has launched a group insurance product against novel coronavirus. The company is planning to distribute it through its corporate partners like banks, large retailers, non-banking lenders, fintech startups and others.

“We provide insurance-in-a-box, our startup and corporate partners can integrate with us and easily add this insurance against novel coronavirus either as a standalone product or bundle it with their existing products to be sold to their end-users,” said Chiranth Patil, co-founder, Riskcovry.

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Another similar insurance against COVID-19 was launched by Digit Insurance, which offers health and general insurance products. Digit’s product offers protection from hospitalisation as well as quarantine in a government facility. The sum-insured ranges from Rs 25,000 to Rs 2 lakh.

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COVID-19 Vaccine
Frequently Asked Questions

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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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