-The Indian Express India’s response has been comprehensive and robust. Right from the onset, the government has taken things very seriously, as reflected in the high-level of political commitment, including by the Prime Minister himself, says Dr Henk Bekedam. While India is yet to adopt the World Health Organisation’s prescription of “test test test” against the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19), Dr Henk Bekedam, WHO’s representative in India, tells The Indian Express that...

-The Hindu Kerala’s rationale for revising its COVID-19 testing guidelines could prove counterproductive Even as the World Health Organization has been urging countries that have reported many laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 cases to become more aggressive in testing, India continues to have among the lowest testing rates in the world. In India, only those people with a travel history to high-risk COVID-19 affected countries or with close contacts to laboratory confirmed COVID-19 cases and...

-The Indian Express ICMR on Coronavirus Testing: India has conducted roughly 6,000 tests so far, lower than the US (8,000), Japan (9,600), France (12,000), the UK (13,000), and Italy (23,000). South Korea has conducted as many as 2 lakh, which experts see as the reason for their significantly declining numbers. As each country debates own testing strategy to combat Covid-19, the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) has decided to monitor community...

KEY TRENDS    • The 2019 India TB report says that the country accounted for a quarter of the global tuberculosis (TB) burden with an estimated 27 lakh cases in 2018. In 2018, the country was able to achieve a total notification of 21.5 lakh TB cases, of which 25 percent was from private sector. Majority of the TB burden is among the working age group. Nearly 89 percent of TB cases came from the age group 15-69 years....

**page** [inside]KEY TRENDS of the Union Budget 2023-24[/inside] Budget 2023-24 is the last full budget before the general election scheduled for 2024. An analysis of the budget allocations suggests that the union government has squeezed expenditure, particularly on food subsidy and the NREGA budget, while boosting Capital expenditure and giving the middle class tax benefits. Social sector activists working on Right to Food, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) came out with...