India Coronavirus Dispatch: Country's pandemic growth rate fastest in world

Delhi govt to tackle unemployment with new job portal, why Bihar's public healthcare system struggles, and what's needed for immunity from Covid-19-news on how India is dealing with the pandemic

Managing Covid-19

Coronavirus in India now growing at the fastest rate in the world: India’s coronavirus epidemic is now growing at the fastest in the world, increasing 20 per cent over the last week to more than 1.4 million confirmed cases. Infections in the South Asian nation of 1.3 billion people have reached 1.43 million, including 32,771 deaths, India’s health ministry said, with daily cases close to a record 50,000 on Monday. India is only trailing the US and Brazil now in the number of confirmed infections, but its growth in new cases is the fastest. Read more here. 

Covaxin human trial begins in Odisha: The city-based Institute of Medical Sciences and SUM Hospital began human trial of the much-awaited vaccine against coronavirus on Monday. Covaxin, the vaccine being developed by Bharat Biotech, was administered to several persons here. Those who had volunteered and undergone a rigorous screening procedure were administered the vaccine, said E Venkat Rao, principal investigator of the trial process. Read more here. 

How Delhi govt hopes to tackle the unemployment crisis through a new job portal: The Delhi government Monday launched a portal to bridge the gap between job seekers and employers, making a push to address the city’s unemployment crisis, sparked by the Covid-19 pandemic and the various curbs to stop its spread. Making the announcement, CM Arvind Kejriwal stressed on the need to revive Delhi’s economy, appealing to industrialists, traders, market associations, and NGOs. among others to come ahead and help get businesses back on their feet. Read more here. 

What’s needed for immunity from Covid-19 – and do Indians stand a better chance: Recent studies have found that antibodies to the novel coronavirus that causes Covid-19 decline rapidly. In other words, immunity to Covid-19 could likely be lost within months of being infected. This could have implications for vaccine candidates currently undergoing human trials. Read more here. 

Opinion
 

An opportunity to reshape health care: The Covid-19 pandemic has massively disrupted our lives. Besides direct devastation of health, the epidemic and the lockdown have had myriad indirect effects, be it on the environment, livelihoods, or supply chains. There has been a lot of discussion around the lack of capacity of our health-care system to fight this epidemic. But the impact of Covid-19 and the lockdown on the ‘business’ of health care has not been examined. This has an important bearing on the larger arena of health care for our citizens in the near future. Read more here. 

The majority cannot afford a balanced diet: New analysis from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) shows that hundreds of millions of people in India above the international poverty line of $1.90 purchasing power parity (PPP) per person per day cannot afford a healthy or nutritious diet. This analysis confirms the fact that the problem of poor nutrition in India is largely on account of the unaffordability of good diets, and not on account of lack of information on nutrition or tastes or cultural preferences. The large majority of Indians cannot afford a balanced diet. Read more here. 

Why does Bihar’s public healthcare system struggle so? Until recently, Bihar had been reported a relatively low numbers of cases, deaths due to Covid-19, and an enviable recovery rate – until things seemed to change suddenly. However, the current state of affairs in Bihar can be seen as an acute manifestation of perennial weaknesses in its healthcare system. These weaknesses are not limited to the system’s ‘hardware’ – like infrastructure and human resources, which are frequently highlighted and debated. The problems encompass the ‘softer’ aspects of the system as well, such as governance, trust and accountability. Read more here. 

Understanding Covid-19
 

India at the centre of vaccine and Moderna’s phase III trials: Irrespective of how the vaccine candidates developed by Indian companies eventually perform, India would remain a central player, both as one of the biggest manufacturers of vaccines in the world, and also one of the biggest markets. As pointed out by Balram Bhargava, director general of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), India controls nearly 60 per cent of the global supply of all kinds of vaccines. Read more here. 

Now, stroke risk found low in hospitalised Covid patients: A new paper published in Stroke, the American Heart Association’s journal, shows a low risk of stroke in patients hospitalised for Covid-19. These findings come after initial reports had suggested a significant risk of stroke in patients hospitalised with Covid-19. The study was conducted by researchers from University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. Read more here. 

Two tests to find out if your face mask works: Arguments about the quality and standard of face coverings underlie recent controversies and explain why many people think they are not effective for protecting against Covid-19. Even the language distinguishes between face masks – which are normally considered as being built to a certain standard – and face coverings that can be almost anything else. Given the wide variety of unregulated face coverings that people are now wearing, how do we know which is most effective? Read more here. 

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