-The Hindu The eminent virologist did not give any reasons for his departure Shahid Jameel, eminent virologist and head of the advisory group to the Indian SARS-COV-2 Genomics Consortia (Insacog), resigned from his post on Friday. Dr. Jameel confirmed to The Hindu that he'd quit but did not give any reasons for his departure. Multiple scientists who are part of Insacog — a group of 10 laboratories across the country, tasked with tracking evolving...

With the rise in Covid-19 daily new cases and daily new deaths since March this year, media reports (please click here and here) on migrant workers returning back to their native places (i.e. places of origin) from migration destinations (i.e. workplaces likes cities and large industrial towns to where the informal and low skilled workers from the marginalised sections of the society migrate seasonally, and sometimes for a longer duration,...

In the month of April this year, there has been an unprecedented upsurge in daily new cases and daily new deaths in the country due to Covid-19. States, which reported large increases in daily new cases and daily new deaths, are Maharashtra, Kerala, Karnataka, Delhi and Uttar Pradesh, to name but a few.   Data accessed from https://www.covid19india.org/, which is a crowdsourced platform and an independent aggregator of daily Covid-19 figures and...

-Hindustan Times There has been shocking, collective policy failure. Focus on controlling the spread of infections, taking care of the ill, vaccination, and genome sequencing now There are four factors why the second wave has hit India with such intensity. First, the variants. The B.1.1.7, the one from the United Kingdom (UK), is present in parts of northern India. B.1.617, sometimes known as the “double mutant”, is pervasive in many places across India....

-The Telegraph Health ministry asks for 15 samples each from five labs and five hospitals in every state every two weeks, which is less than the 5% prescribed for each state The Union health ministry has asked each state to send 150 Covid-positive samples fortnightly for genome sequencing, deviating from the original target set by a national research consortium to genome-sequence 5 per cent of positive cases from all states. The move has...