Heena Sharma Blog

  Amazon India’s ‘ Covid Warriors ’ are helping colleagues and the community with critical resources amidst the medical emergency that has accompanied the country's second Covid-19 surge. In the midst of Rashmi's mother's battle with Covid-19 at a Mumbai hospital, authorities asked her family to make their own arrangements for oxygen as the facility was running out of stock. In Bengaluru, Prashant faced a similar race against time as he desperately tried to hunt down oxygen concentrators for his father, who had not been able to get a hospital bed and was fighting the virus at home. For Abhishek, based in the US, the emergency and anxiety spanned continents as he sought oxygen support for his father-in-law in Delhi. For each of these Amazon employees (names changed), it was a colleague – an Amazon Covid Warrior – who stepped in to help. Read More

  India’s business and financial hub Mumbai, once the country’s coronavirus hotspot, is building facilities to store 10 million doses of the Covid vaccine as it aims to open fully from a strict lockdown. The city’s Municipal Commissioner Iqbal Singh Chahal and his deputy Suresh Kakani, who’s in charge of the vaccination drive, spoke in separate interviews this week before the start of a nationwide rollout on Saturday. Their responses are edited for clarity. Mumbai’s population that comes under the Municipal Corporation is about 15 million. We plan to create vaccine storage capacity of a little more than 10 million, which will be adequate as the vaccination will be done in phases. We have formed 500 teams, each having two vaccinators, two support staff and one security guard. They will initially run the vaccination program at eight centers, which can inject 12,000 people a day. Capacity will rise to 50,000 people daily within a week, subject to availability of vaccines and pe...

  White House advisers have made the case recently for a “natural” approach to herd immunity as a way to reduce the need for public health measures to control the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic while still keeping people safe. This idea is summed up in something called the Great Barrington Declaration, a proposal put out by the American Institute for Economic Research, a libertarian think tank. The basic idea behind this proposal is to let low-risk people in the U. S. socialize and naturally become infected with the coronavirus, while vulnerable people would maintain social distancing and continue to shelter in place. Proponents of this strategy claim so-called “natural herd immunity” will emerge and minimize harm from SARS-CoV-2 while protecting the economy. Another way to get to herd immunity is through mass vaccinations, as we have done with measles, smallpox and largely with polio. A population has achieved herd immunity when a large enough percentage of individuals become immune t...

  People in areas like UP’s Sonbhadra district have been skipping meals to compensate for the extreme decline in incomes since the coronavirus pandemic hit. Many of them are availing loans just to be able to buy food. These families were among those surveyed to find out the impact of lockdowns and the relief, if any, they got from the government’s stimulus package. About 68 per cent of the respondents have reported a fall in their incomes. Economic distress, the report says, has become a reality across states and sectors. Farmers are complaining about low prices and markets being shut, while shipowners rue slowing businesses and daily wage earners say they haven’t had any income in months. About 20 per cent of the respondents said they had to resort to selling durables so they could afford food. By April-end, Kerala had only a couple of dozen active cases and barely 500 new cases since 30 January. The state had claimed to have flattened the curve even while the rest of the count...

  There are over 175 Covid-19 vaccines in development. Almost all government strategies for dealing with the coronavirus pandemic are based on the idea that one of these vaccine candidates will eventually provide widespread protection against the virus and enable us all to return to our normal lives. But there’s no guarantee that this will happen. Even in the most promising cases, we can’t yet be sure that any vaccine will permanently prevent people from catching Covid-19 and enable the disease to be gradually eradicated or at least contained to limited outbreaks. Vaccines may just reduce the severity of symptoms or provide temporary protection. So what will happen if this is the case? Some people have argued that when enough of the population have caught Covid-19, and produced an immune response to it, we will have reached “herd immunity” and the virus will no longer be able to spread. But this is a misunderstanding of what herd immunity means and how viruses spread and so is...

Hetero Healthcare Ltd is supplying 60,000 vials of Covifor, generic version of Remdesivir injection in the country from July 13 to 20, the company website said. Covifor is the first generic brand of Remdesivir, which is meant for treatment of COVID-19 patients that are adults and children, hospitalised with severe symptoms of the disease. The drug is available in 100 mg vial (Injectable). It needs to be administered intravenously in a hospital, critical care setting, under the supervision of a registered medical practitioner. Out of 60,000 vials, Maharashtra, which has the highest number of COVID-19 cases in the country will get 12,500 followed by Delhi and Telangana with 10,000 and 9,000 respectively. According to the website, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka will get 7500, 6000, 2000 and 3000 respectively while the rest of the country will get 10,000 injections. Read More

In the absence of a COVID-19 vaccine or drugs, the researchers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have warned that India might record 2.87 lakh coronavirus cases per day by the end of winter 2021. The world may witness 249 million (24.9 crore) cases and 1.8 million (18 lakh) deaths by spring 2021 if there are no effective treatments or vaccination, according to the study conducted by the researchers Hazhir Rahmandad, TY Lim and John Sterman of MIT's Sloan School of Management. "In this paper, we build and estimate a multi-country model of the Covid-19 pandemic at a global scale," the study authors wrote. For the findings, the MIT research team use a multi-country modified SEIR (Susceptible, Exposed, Infectious, Recovered) model, a standard mathematical model for infectious diseases used by epidemiologists, to simultaneously estimate the transmission of Covid-19 in 84 countries (4.75 billion people). Read More

India's COVID-19 tally raced pastthe seven-lakh mark on Tuesday after a single-day spike of22,252 infections,five days after crossing the six-lakh post, while thedeath toll breached the 20,000 mark, according to theUnion Health Ministrydata. It took110days for coronavirus infections in the country to reach the one-lakh,while just 49 days more to go past theseven-lakhmark. This is the fifth consecutiveday that COVID-19 cases have increased by more than 20,000. The country's coronavirus infectioncaseload increased to 7,19,665 on Tuesday, while the death toll climbed to 20,160 with467 persons succumbing to the disease in the last 24 hours, the data updated at 8 am showed. The number of recoveries stands at 4,39,947, while there are 2,59,557 active cases of coronavirus infection presently in the country. Read More

In his televised address to the nation on Tuesday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the extension of the PM Gareeb Kalyan Anna Yojana until the end of November. The scheme will cover around 800 million people. Explaining the steps taken by his government in dealing with the impact of Covid-19 in India, the PM said that we are at a stage, especially after lockdown, where we needed to take more precautions to stay safe from the coronavirus. "We are entering a time when we all become prone to common illnesses. So, I urge everyone to take good care of themselves," he said. "So far as coronavirus is concerned, India is better placed than the rest of the world, said the PM. The timely implementation of the lockdown in India saved many lives," he added. Read More

The global confirmed case count is now at 9.2 million. At present, 474,998 people have lost their lives in the pandemic globally, while 4,963,202 infected people have managed to recover. Almost 40 per cent of all fatalities worldwide are in just two countries – the US and Brazil. In India, there are now over 440,000 reported cases of coronavirus . Of this number, 178,014 cases are still active, while recoveries are much higher at 248,190. Nationwide death toll stands at 14,011 at present. Here are some data points on the extent of the pandemic. Read More

The global count of confirmed coronavirus cases stands at almost 9 million, 467,418 people have lost their lives in the pandemic till now, while 4.8 million people have managed to beat the virus. Two countries, the US and Brazil, have more than a million million cases each in the world. In India, there are now more than 400,00 confirmed cases of coronavirus, of which 169,451 are still active. Recoveries, currently at 227,755, are growing well and have improved India’s recovery rate to over 55 per cent. There have been 13,254 fatalities in the country because of the virus. Read More

A drug named dexamethasone is the talk of the hour given recent claims that it can cut mortality in patients with severe forms of Covid-19 by a third. The claims originated in a press release issued by scientists involved with the RECOVERY (short for ‘Randomised Evaluation of Covid-19 Therapy‘) trial, from the University of Oxford. They have said that the trial data suggests that dexamethasone cuts the risk of death by one-third in patients with ventilator support and by one-fifth in patients requiring oxygen support. This said, it’s important to note that their announcement was preliminary in nature: the study’s underlying data isn’t available yet for independent verification. Read More

The global count of coronavirus cases is now at 8,299,389, with 446,929 deaths. More than 4 million people have now recovered from the virus. The US continues to have the highest death toll in the world, followed by Brazil and Russia. In India, there are now 155,227 active cases, while 186,934 patients have now been cured. The death toll stands at 11,903 at present, with more than 2,000 in just one day because of reclassification of deaths. India now has the eighth highest number of deaths in the world. Read More

Here is a round-up of important articles from across Indian publications on Covid-19 . From the role of a constitutional court, to why increasing indebtedness is not the wisest solution, and the chances of catching Covid-19 on a plane — read these and more in today’s India dispatch. Expert Speak Govt’s stimulus package would increase indebtedness, not the wisest solution: The increased allocation to India’s rural jobs programme may help to some extent, but some of it will fund the increased wage-rate announced earlier, and only a fraction may be available to increase the mandays of work available. Read More

With the Covid-19 cases zipping past five million people globally last week and rocketing towards six million, the search for a vaccine and a therapy has become more and more urgent. Some statisticians say the case count could be at least 5 to 20 times higher due to inconsistencies and variations in testing and testing protocols in different countries. A paper published by the Imperial College London estimated that the number of people infected by Covid-19 in the UK as of March 30 was between 800,000 to 3.7 million. The official case count then was just 22,141. Even the more conservative actual estimate of 800,000 is 36 times higher than the reported count. Without a vaccine and an effective treatment, we may never get back to life as it used to be. Read More

The Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) has fast-tracked the roll out of the global 'Solidarity' trial launched by the World Health Organisation (WHO) to help in finding an effective treatment for Covid-19 . 'Solidarity' is an international clinical trial to compare four treatment options against the standard of care to assess their relative effectiveness against Covid-19. By enrolling patients in multiple countries, the trial aims to rapidly discover whether any of the drugs slow disease progression or improve survival. Importantly, the initiative provides for both speed and scale. Read More

Here is a round-up of important articles on Covid-19 from across Indian publications — From lockdown in Antarctica, to uncovering the regional parameters of Covid-19, and how vulnerable the homeless are — read these and more in today’s India dispatch. Expert Speak Relaxing labour laws can’t help industry in the long run; formalising the economy can: Though firms seemingly have an upper hand if labour laws — which protect workers’ rights — are relaxed, in reality, as a result of weak labour laws, firms will have to work with labour that “owes no allegiance to the organisation”. Read this interview with Errol D’Souza, professor of economics and director of Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Ahmedabad, on how the dilution in laws will end up making these organisations invest more in monitoring and enforcement to obtain productivity from precarious employment. Read More

People gathered at liquor shops across India when coronavirus curbs were lifted on Monday morning. Several shops and industries started opening in accordance with the guidelines issued by the Ministry of Home Affairs. It's all red and orange in Bihar, no green zones To contain the spread of coronavirus in Bihar, the state government has converted the green zone into orange. Therefore, the state only has red and orange zones, reports Dainik Jagran. The police have been ordered to maintain law and order and ensure that social distancing is duly followed. The government has said that people won't be able to travel to different cities without necessary passes. Security and testing will be tighter at the checkpoints on the borders. Strict actions will be taken if people enter the state without passes. However, some leniency will be given in orange zones. Shops will remain open till 7 pm. Saloons have been given permission to resume operation. Cab operators like Ola and U...

The NITI Aayog building in the national capital was sealed for 48 hours after a director-level officer tested positive for coronavirus, a senior official said on Tuesday. "A director-level officer working at NITI Bhawan has tested positive for Covid-19. Today, at 9 am, he got his report, and then he informed authorities," Alok Kumar advisor at NITI Aayog told PTI. He further said that those who came in contact with the person had been asked to go on a self-quarantine. "We are following the necessary protocol. The health ministry has been informed and all due processes will be followed. So, we are closed for 48 hours," Kumar added. Read More

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Monday demanded Prime Minister Narendra Modi to take the strictest action against the alleged profiteering in coronavirus rapid test kits procurement. "Even when the entire country is fighting COVID-19, some people do not miss out on making unfair profits. Shame, disgust at this corrupt mentality. We demand from the Prime Minister that strictest action should be taken on these profiteers soon," Gandhi tweeted in Hindi. He said that the country will "never forgive" those making an unfair profit by selling testing kits. Read More