-The Hindu Balram Bhargava says more Rapid Antigen Tests will be conducted from now on. The national COVID-19 positivity rate stood at 21% and 310 of the 734 districts had reported positivity greater than or equal to the national average, Balram Bhargava, Director-General, Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), said on Tuesday. At the Health Ministry briefing, Dr. Bhargava said the country now had the RTPCR testing capacity of about 16 lakh a...
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India learns a bitter lesson for disregarding crucial warnings and recommendations on Covid-19
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...
More »KK Shailaja, Kerala's Health Minister, interviewed by AM Jigeesh (The Hindu Business Line)
-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...
More »UP journalist interrogated by police for story on low quality PPEs -Ayush Tiwari
-Newslaundry.com Such interrogations have to happen officially, they cannot question me about my sources and contacts over tea.’ A journalist in Uttar Pradesh’s Lucknow was interrogated by the Special Task Force of the state’s police after reporting on low-quality personal protective equipment kits supplied to hospitals and colleges in the state. On April 17, Lucknow-based journalist Manish Pandey of News1 India, a Hindi news channel, broke the story of a letter sent by...
More »Health sees minuscule increase; govt to privatise district hospitals -Sumi Sukanya Dutta
-The New Indian Express The proposal, mentioned in the Budget, has raised doubts. NEW DELHI: The idea to privatise district hospital — on which the Centre’s top think tank Niti Aayog is still trying to build consensus — was declared as the official policy of the Modi government on Saturday. Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, in her budget speech, said that district hospitals will be attached with private medical colleges on public-private...
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