India coronavirus dispatch: Can your phone test you for Covid-19 in future

Equitable and effective care, how India could fill in the blanks on excess mortality, and Multilater-alism post Covid-19-roundup of news in Indian publications on how India is dealing with the pandemi

India is inadequately industrialised, skilled… coronavirus leaves no choice but to change: How industries, factories, manufacturing and services could reopen, why are banks turning risk-averse, and what can structurally change for poorly financed MSMEs in terms of policy? Read this interview with Manish Sabharwal, chairman & co-founder of the staffing and human capital firm Teamlease Services, and Director, RBI Central Board.

OPINION
 

Multilateralism post Covid-19: The pandemic has placed all international institutions under a mag-nifying glass. By any measure, most have performed below par. Such is the caution espoused that multilateralism today seems to have reverted to its version 0.1. The General Assembly now passes resolutions through no objection procedure. The Security Council has been found wanting in no small measure. The 75th session’s ‘leaders week’ runs the risk of being reduced to a video playback session. Read more here.

We must walk tightrope between online and offline learning: The Covid-19 pandemic has had a great impact on the way children learn. The accelerating force of digitisation has created a disrup-tive online phenomenon across schools around the world. It is true that new challenges and oppor-tunities have emerged for educators, parents and students, but we have also entered areas of many uncertainties. Will schools, functioning within old paradigms, summon the courage to shift their practices to support the personal growth of the next generation of learners equitably—whether they are the privileged, marginalised or the disabled? Read more here.

A prescription of equitable and effective care: Hospital services have to focus on in-patient man-agement of moderate and severe pneumonia, prioritising intensive care unit (ICU) beds for poten-tially reversible illness. We need to ensure that every patient with moderate and severe Covid-19 pneumonia has access to the optimum level of care, to prevent deaths and ameliorate suffering. Read more here.

MANAGING Covid-19 
 

How is already Covid-19 changing the way we fly? Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri said on Tuesday (June 16) that the government will “commence the process of resuming internation-al passenger flights from India” next month, if the novel coronavirus behaved in a predictable man-ner, and all stakeholders came on board with the plan. This process will include assessment of health safety level in various countries in addition to pitching India’s position, so other countries would accept travellers from India, he said. Read more here.

How India can fill in the blanks on excess mortality: Just 70 per cent of deaths in India are regis-tered, and only a fifth of these are medically certified, more often than not with the underlying cause of death recorded incorrectly. Even countries with near-complete registration of deaths in normal times have acknowledged that their officially recorded Covid-19 death tolls might be un-derestimated, and most of the developed world is now focusing not on directly reported Covid-19 deaths but on excess mortality--the number of deaths above that expected during ‘normal’ times. Read more here.

Doubts reign over study with ICMR ties that put India’s Covid-19 peak in late 2020: A group of scientists – some of them affiliated with the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) – had penned a paper in which they claimed that based on modelling studies and data analysis, India’s Covid-19 epidemic would peak around November 2020. However, on June 15, ICMR issued a tweet distancing itself from the study and disputing its methods. Read more on this here.

Too many to test & too few to lead the Covid-19 fight — Assam struggles after early success: Until 4 May, when the Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) allowed inter-state travel, Assam had all of 42 Covid-19 cases, one of India’s lowest at the time. But as the floodgates opened and thousands of passengers returned, the number of cases spiked, prompting the state government to adopt a “ruthless quarantine” and testing policy. Read more here.

UNDERSTANDING Covid-19

Can flushing the toilet spread coronavirus? A new study published in the journal Physics of Flu-ids says that blocking the path of faecal-oral transmission, which commonly occurs during toilet us-age, is key to suppressing the spread of the novel coronavirus. The study points out that flushing a toilet generates “strong turbulence within the bowl”. The question is if this turbulent flow can expel aerosol particles containing viruses out of the bowl. Read more here.

Dexamethasone for Covid-19: It's hopeful, but not a magic bullet: The rise and demise of hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malaria drug once touted as the 'wonder drug' to treat Covid-19, has made the world wary of anything that claims to be 'exceptional,' 'magic bullet,' or 'definitive' treat-ment. When preliminary results from a recent study touted an old, cheap, anti-inflammatory drug dexamethasone as the '1st treatment for Covid-19 to reduce mortality,' there was cautious hope, accompanied by a healthy dose of skepticism. Read more here.

Can your phone test you for Covid-19 in the future? Experts weigh in: It may seem farfetched, but it’s possible to use your smartphone to detect diseases. Mobile devices can be turned into tools to rapidly identify a variety of disease-causing agents, including bacteria, toxins, and viruses. Smartphone-based tests have been developed for detecting HIV, malaria, TB, and various food contaminants. Work is now also underway to use smartphones to detect Covid-19 – though there are various questions about the practicality and usefulness of using technology in this manner. Read more here.

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