The rise in COVID-19 daily new cases and daily new deaths compelled many state governments to impose local level lockdowns during April-May 2021. As of 20th April, 2021, partial lockdowns were noticed in 10 states across the country and complete lockdown was imposed in Delhi. As of 8th May, 2021, nearly the entire country was under complete lockdown as a result of either partial lockdowns and night curfews or complete...

-CBGAIndia.in India’s response to the pandemic has depended heavily on the exploited labour of women workers, most of them from marginalised backgrounds. These are ASHAs or Accredited Social Health Activists, the cadre of frontline health workers that has been mobilised for everything from door-to-door surveys, distributing medicine kits, measuring oxygen saturation, monitoring containment zones and spreading awareness about vaccines. 70,000 such women recently went on strike in Maharashtra demanding higher pay,...

-IndiaSpend.com All-India picture unclear as only three states are sharing comorbidity data of Covid-19 deceased. Doctors are calling upon states to reveal data on both comorbidities and the spread of variants to gauge their impact on Covid-19 deaths Kolkata: More people without any underlying comorbid conditions died of Covid-19 during the peak of the second wave of the pandemic in West Bengal, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu than in the peak of the...

-Hindustan Times The Union health ministry has still not classified the Delta plus variant as a ‘variant of concern’. Last week, NITI Aayog’s Dr VK Paul said the way forward is to watch for the variant’s potential presence in the country and take appropriate public health responses. As India continues to fight the second wave of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) pandemic, it is also struggling to control the increasing spread of the...

-The Telegraph With opportunity costs attached to the livelihoods of pastoralists being so high, the government must facilitate their safe movement India is battling a second wave of Covid-19 infections; this time it has made inroads into rural India. Pastoral communities, who have limited information about the symptoms, preventive measures, diagnosis, treatment and vaccination, are becoming silent victims. A brief by the League for Pastoral Peoples and Endogenous Livestock Development claims that...