-The Telegraph The country has an advantage that many people have two vaccines plus a past infection: Expert Bhramar Mukherjee, a professor of biostatistics at the University of Michigan who has been tracking India’s Covid-19 epidemic for nearly two years, is now visiting her parents’ farmhouse in Ruppur near Santiniketan in Birbhum. “This is our escape and solace in the epidemic,” she said. In this interview, Mukherjee tells The Telegraph what she expects...

-Civil Society News, Gurugram THROUGHOUT the first and second waves of the coronavirus pandemic, the extent of the tragedy in India was mostly unknown. How many people had really died? Were they men or women? Information was anecdotal and speculative. This April, there were queues at crematoriums and burial grounds, but even as bodies piled up there were no reliable figures to go by. We now have some figures based on data-hunting...

-The Hindu Business Line Potato production in Bengal is estimated to be higher by nearly 16 per cent at 110 lakh tonnes this year, as compared to 95 lakh tonnes in 2020 Potato prices in West Bengal have dropped by nearly 50 per cent in less than two months on the back of excess production in key producing regions including Uttar Pradesh, Bengal and Gujarat. Wholesale price of the tuber (Jyoti variety)...

-Scroll.in Death registration data shows the second wave of Covid-19 hit Andhra Pradesh much harder than what has been captured in official data. Andhra Pradesh reported over 130,000 deaths in May 2021, or nearly five times the usual number of deaths reported in the month, official data shows. In all, the excess mortality reported by the state from January to May 2021 was 34 times the official Covid-19 toll for the same...

-Newsclick.in Large-scale privatisation of the vaccination programme is happening, cutting of low-paying sections of the population. Yet, other discrepancies remain, calling for an audit by CAG. India is facing an acute vaccine shortage. The impression that generally prevails is that this shortage is because while production capacity is slow to increase, there has been a sudden spurt in vaccine demand since vaccination is now open for the 18-44 years age group in...