India coronavirus dispatch: The strategy behind Kerala's testing method

Protecting the vulnerable, troubles of the economy going ahead, and three stages of brain damage due to Covid-19—a roundup of articles in Indian publications on how India is dealing with the pandemic

Interview

Our strategy is trace, quarantine, test, isolate and treat: In this conversation, Kerala Health Min-ister K K Shailaja discusses how the state kept the numbers down, and looks at the challenges ahead. She explains Kerala’s testing methods and how the state is testing in a strategic way. “The most important aspect is tracing first and testing the symptomatic cases first. As for the others who have a travel history or some contact history, we are properly quarantining them. And if any symp-toms occur during the quarantine period, we are shifting the patient to hospital, and again we are taking swabs and testing. But we should be very thorough so that the quarantine is scientific.” Read the entire interview here 

Hunger must be fought like the virus; economy in serious trouble: Former RBI Governor C Rangarajan says the time has come for the country to emerge from its lockdown else the economy will face a very serious problem. He believes it is difficult to ascertain the damage to the economy at this stage because the outcome would depend on the extent of the lockdown and the pace of subse-quent recovery. Rangarajan believes it is still possible that India will emerge with a minor positive tick due to the contribution of areas like agriculture. However, extending the lockdown may dimin-ish that possibility. Read more here 

Opinion
 

What govt could have done differently to deal with the pandemic, what it can still do now: The government should have, from the start, incentivised public and private corporations to exponential-ly expand the production of PPEs, testing kits and ventilators. Most frontline health workers like ASHAs and ICDS workers, and sanitation workers, are underpaid and lack job security. It should convert stadiums, universities and hotels into hospitals and quarantine beds. Read more here

Managing Covid-19
 

India has gone beyond containment, focus now on protecting the vulnerable: Experts: India had over 10,000 new Covid-19 infections on Friday and moved above the United Kingdom to be-come the country with the fourth-highest number of cases across the world. States like Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu, along with the national capital Delhi, have continued to witness steep rises in in-fections every day. Though the Indian Council of Medical Research explicitly stated on Thursday that there was no community transmission in India, experts say some cities may have already reached that stage. Read more here

India’s religious places are adapting to the coronavirus pandemic by modifying tradition: The joy of being able to visit one’s chosen place of worship works in tandem with the fear of con-tracting Covid-19. Religious places in India, on their part, are armed with thermal scanners, sanitis-ers, and a bunch of changed protocols. Some of these guidelines have been laid down by the gov-ernment, while others have been put in place keeping the practices of specific religions in mind. Read more here

How India can strengthen its social security code to include the 422 million workers left be-hind: Even after 73 years of Independence, only 9.3 per cent of India’s 466 million-strong work-force has social security. This means the remaining 90.7 per cent still do not have access to the kind of protection that employees of most registered companies take for granted. India is the fifth-largest economy in the world, in the same league as Sub-Saharan Africa. In order to ensure social security for all workers, the draft Code on Social Security, which is being discussed by Parliament’s Stand-ing Committee on Labour, must show greater ambition than it does in the current version. Read more here

What is behind the mismatch in Delhi’s Covid-19 death figures? The mismatch in the capi-tal’s coronavirus toll, between the numbers maintained by the Delhi government and the three mu-nicipal corporations of the city, once again came to the fore on Thursday, with the civic bodies re-leasing consolidated data of cremations and burials conducted under Covid-19 protocol. Read more here

It's no longer business as usual at Mumbai's century-old dumping ground: The coronavirus and the lockdown have brought life here to an edge like never before. Residents of Deonar’s slums have had to step out of homes often: to use community toilets and collect water or food, making social distancing and the lockdown hard to impose. The ward these slums belong to became among the worst affected in the city. With nearly 2,000 cases, doctors say they now struggle with beds, venti-lators, oxygen and anything else they need to treat patients. For those who are not sick, hunger stays close. Not surprisingly, those who can, are leaving on precarious journeys home. Read more here

Understanding Covid-19

Neurologists identify three stages of brain damage due to Covid-19: Scientists have conducted a comprehensive review of how the novel coronavirus affects the brain and have classified the brain damage caused by the virus into three stages. In the first stage, the virus damage is limited to epi-thelial cells of nose and mouth. The main symptoms include transient loss of smell and taste. In the second stage, the virus triggers a cytokine storm—toxic proteins released as a result of an overactive immune system. In the third stage, an ‘explosive level’ of cytokine storm damages the blood-brain barrier—the protective insulation layer in blood vessels of the brain. Read more here 

Double lung transplant for Covid-19 treatment: US performs surgery in a global ‘first’: A young Covid-19 patient in her 20s received a successful double lung transplant, in a ‘first’ of its kind surgery to treat Covid-19. The woman had been healthy otherwise, but her lungs seemed to have been completely destroyed. The surgery took 10 hours and was reportedly even more difficult as the woman’s lungs were “completely plastered to the tissue around them, the heart, the chest wall and diaphragm”, according to the surgeons. Read more here