-The Hindu But State-wise data on testing and positivity rates shows that the picture is not uniform Weeks after registering a sudden bump in cases and leading the world in daily case load, the number of new COVID-19 cases in India has shown a consistent dip in the past week — from a seven-day rolling average of 3.92 lakh as on May 8 to 3.41 lakh on May 15. There was also...

-The Hindu The pandemic has highlighted the importance of expanding social security nets Pinki is a 28-year-old Dalit woman from Saharanpur, U.P. Her husband met with an accident during the national lockdown in April 2020. The two of them had to sell all their belongings for his treatment and subsequently became dependent on her parents. Such avoidable miseries were heaped on millions due to the unilateral national lockdown in 2020. The monthly...

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,...

-Down to Earth With more than 230,000 pending COVID-19 reports, the actual daily caseload of UP can be much higher Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state, is in the middle of a COVID-19 maelstrom. Even as thousands are dying or getting infected, the experiences of patients shows that COVID-19 test results are getting delayed and the administration is fudging figures. Down to Earth (DTE) analysed the government’s data related to the daily sample...

India is facing a second and worse wave of Covid-19 pandemic. At this time, the country requires journalism to tell the stories of courage, of loss and grief, of the state of preparedness and about the efforts being made by communities, individuals, civil society and government. Journalists are needed to document with rigour the gaps and lacunae in governance when it appears. At the same time, journalists need to be vigilant about...