-The Hindu Delhi’s healthcare system overwhelmed at every level In the national capital, a horror story that stARTs with “I have fever” is being played out in almost every family as COVID-19 cases continue to surge. At every step of the way, from getting tested to finding oxygen support and a hospital bed, the healthcare system has been overwhelmed. Outside hospitals, and in makeshift COVID Care Centres (CCC), patients and attendants can...

-The Hindu Over the last few decades, intellectual property rules have served as a lethal barrier to the right to access healthcare Even an unprecedented pandemic can do little, it appears, to upset the existing global regime governing monopoly rights over the production and distribution of life-saving drugs. If anything, since the onset of COVID-19, we’ve only seen a reaffirmation of intellectual property rules that have served as a lethal barrier to...

-The Indian Express The pandemic has forced us to rethink how we live our lives. We must also allow it to dismantle our exam-centric education system that only creates hyper-competitiveness and perpetuates inequalities. With the aggressive return of COVID-19, we are experiencing heightened anxiety. And amid this turmoil, we are also witnessing the breakdown of “normalcy” in our education system. As board exams get cancelled or postponed around the country, students, parents...

-The Hindu Lender sees ‘considerable downside risk’ from latest COVID wave, says may revise forecast in July The Asian Development Bank has raised its forecast for India’s growth in 2021-22 to 11%, from 8% earlier, even as it warned that failure to control the resurgence of COVID-19 cases including April’s exponential jump poses a “considerable downside risk to the recovery”. ‘Targeted containment’ In its assessment based on end-March data, the ADB cited this year’s...

-The Hindu U.S. lawmakers and other influential voices have been calling for the U.S. to donate its spare vaccines to countries like India, pARTicularly some of the tens of millions of doses of AstraZeneca vaccine. Washington DC: The Biden administration has said that the government of India did not request it for ready-to-use vaccines, as pressure has been mounting on the U.S. to give out vaccines to countries such as India, which...