-The Hindu Unions to study proposal, return for talks on January 22. Farm union leaders will consider a proposal from the Central government to suspend the implementation of three contentious farm laws for the next one and a half years while a committee is formed to look into their demands. Union leaders said the Centre had also offered to submit an affidavit to the Supreme Court to this effect. They will discuss the...

-The Hindu State intimidation of protesting groups cannot serve as a substitute for political dialogue The NIA’s decision to summon people associated with the ongoing farmers agitation as ‘witnesses’ in a sedition case is definitely out of the ordinary, even if not entirely surprising. Punjabi actor Deep Sidhu and farmers’ leader Baldev Singh Sirsa are among 40 people it has summoned in connection with a fresh case registered on December 15, 2020...

-The Indian Express The current scenario is ideal for policymakers and practitioners to drive home the importance of health spending and institutional development With the first batch of anti-COVID vaccines being rolled out, the mood of the nation seems to be upbeat as it bids farewell to the pain and anguish of last year. The emergency-use approval to the vaccine developed by Oxford University and the Swedish-British pharma major AstraZeneca, manufactured in...

-The Hindu Physicians are confronted with a complex problem that involves multiple organ systems Medical students are taught to classify diseases as either congenital or acquired. Acquired diseases are infectious or inflammatory, nutritional or metabolic, vascular or neoplastic (tumours, benign or malignant). COVID-19 is acquired, infectious/inflammatory. The microbe is SARS-CoV-2. What are co-morbidities and why do they make COVID-19 severe and life-threatening? Chronic nutritional/metabolic diseases start as diabetes, hypertension, metabolic syndrome or obesity....

-The Hindu Vaccination is important to prevent a second wave Several people have questioned the emergency approval given to the indigenously developed COVID-19 vaccine. They have demanded efficacy data and cast aspersions on the regulatory machinery. Such views will only increase vaccine hesitancy. It is not the case that the vaccine developed indigenously is being pushed by vested interests, while the international vaccines are great. Questions have been raised about the Moderna and...