-The Hindu Chief Justice Sanjib Banerjee, in an observation, said there can’t be adhocism in dealing with a pandemic Chief Justice of the Madras High Court Sanjib Banerjee on Thursday wondered what the Centre was doing for the last 12 to 14 months without anticipating the second wave of COVID-19 and getting prepared to face it. Referring to desperate measures being taken when the wave was at its peak now, he said...

-The Hindu Leveraging existing schemes and providing universal social security is of utmost importance India is one of the largest welfare states in the world and yet, with COVID-19 striking in 2020, the state failed to provide for its most vulnerable citizens. The country witnessed multiple crises: mass inter- and intra-migration, food insecurity, and a crumbling health infrastructure. The extenuating circumstances of the pandemic has pushed an estimated 75 million people into...

-The Hindu The Health Ministry’s guidelines for managing COVID-19 ignore evidence, pricing, cost-effectiveness and social relevance. The Health Ministry released its first COVID-19 management guidelines about a year ago. The initial treatment guidelines included hydroxychloroquine, which led to panic buying of the drug. Little was known in those initial months. In the last one year, multiple studies have proven the lack of efficacy of hydroxychloroquine. While most practitioners have moved away from...

-Twocircles.net Pyare Khan from Nagpur has spent around Rs 1 crore for procuring oxygen tankers, oxygen concentrators and cylinders. Through newspapers, he learnt about the severe shortage of oxygen in hospitals and wanted to contribute to addressing the shortage of oxygen in his city. Everyone can recognize an entrepreneur when seeing one, but no one knows how they became one. Was it in their nature – they were just born to build...

-The Hindu Business Line Kerala’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic has been the subject of international conversation about public health systems. Piloting Kerala’s fight against the pandemic is the State’s Health Minister and CPI(M)’s Central Committee member KK Shailaja who speaks exclusively to BusinessLine about the criticality of publicly-run healthcare and how the need of the hour is to nationalise the system. Excerpts: * What are the lessons to be learnt from...