India coronavirus dispatch: Hotspots are emerging in the villages

Changing approach towards mask use, domestic violence in the time of Covid-19, will it be safe for children to attend school once they reopen?-roundup of news on how India is dealing with the pandemic

Opinion

Changing our approach towards mask use: Lately, a series of studies has provided evidence that widespread mask use can help reduce the spread of Covid-19 and considerably slow the pandemic. With world opinion coming round in favour of mask use, early this month the World Health Organization (WHO) adopted a slightly more favourable position towards widespread mask use than ear-lier. India’s initial scepticism towards widespread mask use continues to linger at a time when this simple public health intervention is more crucial than before. Read more here.

Fighting a double pandemic: Waking up to screams, thuds, angry shouting and the sickening sound of someone crashing into a wall, a table, a door. This is the cruel reality of many children and young people across our Commonwealth. And as economies, institutions and social welfare sectors continue to buckle under the strain of the unprecedented Covid-19 pandemic crisis, there is a dan-gerous escalation in the risk to the millions of people caught in the clutches of domestic and gender-based violence. Read more here.

Managing Covid-19
 

New Covid hotspots are emerging in villages after migrants returned, govt estimates show: After overwhelming India’s megacities, the coronavirus is now moving through the country’s vast hin-terland. Home to nearly 70 per cent of India’s 1.3 billion population, the nation’s villages have little access to health care and are struggling to support themselves through the country’s prolonged eco-nomic slowdown. Initially isolated from the epidemic that has swamped the capital New Delhi and financial centre Mumbai, rural areas were exposed when millions of migrant workers who lost their jobs in the cities when the government implemented a strict nationwide lockdown on March 25 went home. Read more here.

Children with Cancer must contend with Covid-19: 50,000 estimated Indian children in the 0-19 age group are diagnosed with cancer every year, many of whom have to face even worse challenges due to the pandemic and the lockdown. These range from postponing or missing their treatment cy-cle, to not being able to procure medicines and access specialised tests, to facing difficulty in find-ing admission because their hospitals have been designated as Covid-19 facilities. Some have not been able to go back to their hometowns amid the travel restrictions imposed during the lockdown even after completing their treatment, thus bearing additional living costs in big cities, while others are unable to travel to big cities to even start cancer treatment. Read more here.

UV sanitisation, stripped bare of luxuries, nutritionist — Delhi hotels gear up for Covid patients: The Delhi hotels engaged by the government to ramp up its healthcare infrastructure amid a Covid-19 surge have made multiple tweaks and changes to host patients.  From equipping the premises with precautionary aids such as wash basins and sanitisers, and hiring contractors to handle the laundry handled by patients, to stripping the rooms bare of luxury fixtures, the premier hotels are adopting many steps to serve their new role as Covid care centres. Read more here.

Telangana records 730 new Covid-19 cases, highest single-day rise: Telangana Sunday witnessed the highest single day spike in COVID-19 cases with 730 new patients testing positive in the state. This takes the overall COVID-19 case count to 7,802. A total of 3,731 people have been discharged after treatment and there are 3,861 active cases. Sunday also saw seven people succumbing to the coronavirus, pushing the state's death toll to 210. The number of cumulative tests stood at 57,054. Read more here.

More than 20,000 foreign medical graduates want to aid Covid fight, but govt won’t agree: In light of the coronavirus pandemic, more than 20,000 foreign medical graduates (FMGs) have ap-proached the government to allow them to work as doctors without the mandatory bridge exam that they otherwise have to clear to practice in India. The graduates who complete their MBBS from countries like China, Ukraine, Russia, Bangladesh, Philippines, Nepal and Kazakhstan, have to clear the Foreign Medical Graduate Exam to practice in India, as mandated by the MCI. MBBS gradu-ates from the US, UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand do not need to write this exam. Read more here.

Understanding Covid-19
 

Covid-19 behaves like a sexually transmitted infection: Viruses walk a fine line between severity and transmissibility. If they are too virulent, they kill or incapacitate their hosts; this limits their abil-ity to infect new hosts. Conversely, viruses that cause little harm may not be generating enough cop-ies of themselves to be infectious. But SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes the Covid-19 dis-ease, sidesteps this evolutionary trade-off. Symptoms often don’t appear until after infected people have been spreading the virus for several days. One study of SARS-CoV-2 estimated that the high-est rate of viral shedding, and therefore transmissibility, was one to two days before the person in-fected begins to show symptoms. Read more here.

Slow and opaque decisions during Covid-19 crisis put the spotlight on India’s drug regulator: On April 3, biotech startup Bione Ventures Private Limited announced the launch of its “break-through…simple point-of-care home screening kit”. These rapid antibody kits, the company said, had been sourced from “worldwide” partners and had received approval from the “requisite regula-tory authorities”. With the IC MR’s test kits starting to run scarce and testing having recently opened up to the private sector, the announcement invoked media interest. However, rapid tests, which look for disease-fighting antibodies as opposed to the virus itself, could give misleading re-sults and are not reliable diagnostic kits as the company seemed to be marketing them as.Read more here.

Podcast
 

Children and Covid-19:  While we know that children are less at risk of contracting COVID-19 and will experience less severe symptoms if infected, there have been rare cases of multi-system in-flammatory syndrome reported in some parts of the world. In the midst of the pandemic, the fore-most question on parents’ minds is how to keep their children safe. And will it be safe for them to resume attending school once they reopen? Read more here.

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