-CaravanMagazine.in A national task force on COVID-19, comprising 21 leading Scientists from across the country, which was supposed to advise the Narendra Modi government on its response to the pandemic, did not meet even once in the week preceding the announcement to extend the nationwide lockdown, according to four members of the group of experts. In a national broadcast on 14 April, Modi announced the decision to extend the lockdown till...

-The Hindu 40% of patients with severe respiratory illness lacked travel history, suggest ICMR Scientists There was evidence for community transmission — or instances of coronavirus (COVID-19) in patients who had no established contact with someone who had picked up the disease from abroad — from as early as March 22, suggests a research study in the Indian Journal of Medical Research, authored by several ICMR Scientists — including its head Balram...

-The Telegraph A Twitter campaign sends a searing message DocsNeedGear — a campaign on Twitter on the day Prime Minister Narendra Modi called upon Indians to light torches for nine minutes against Covid-19 on Sunday — tried to drive home the message that doctors fighting the coronavirus pandemic needed protection. “We won’t be safe if our doctors are not safe. Remember everyone,” said a tweet under #DocsNeedGear on Friday. Several Twitter users posted news...

-Networkideas.org We are economists and social Scientists who are deeply concerned about the major implications for the Indian statistical system, of the attempt to combine data collection for the 2021 Census of India with that for the proposed National Population Register. The Census of India, which provides a basic household and population listing based on anonymous data, is an essential requirement for the country and provides the statistical basis for all assessments...

-The Hindu For the first time in India, a whole region has recorded the presence of pesticides and PAH in its natural sources of water and surface sediments Kolkata: Groundwater as well as river water in the western Bengal basin has high concentrations of pesticides and toxic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), a study authored by a group of Scientists from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur has revealed. The researchers tested hundreds...