After the outbreak of COVID-19 in China during early January this year and its dissemination globally within a few days, health experts have suggested ways to check its spread exponentially among the rest of the population. In the age of internet connectivity, work-from-home and self-isolation have been advised as solutions to ensure social distancing and avoid large-scale social gatherings. Experts have asked governments and private enterprises to keep people at...

-Hindustan Times Mumbai: Fearing a lockdown in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak, citizens have started to throng supermarkets and grocery stores to buy provisions, with many shops running out of stock on Sunday and Monday. Local groceries and supermarket chains said they had to refill stock meant for an entire week on one day or source it over the next two days. Among the commodities that are most in demand are...

-The Hindu Business Line Suppressing data that point to low growth, rising joblessness and poverty impedes effective policymaking in a crisis Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, in her Budget speech, said “data is the new oil” and stressed on the credibility of data to combat the difficulties in real-time monitoring of the Indian economy. She even proposed building data centre parks throughout the country so that skilful incorporation of data in every step...

-The Hindu Kerala’s rationale for revising its COVID-19 testing guidelines could prove counterproductive Even as the World Health Organization has been urging countries that have reported many laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 cases to become more aggressive in testing, India continues to have among the lowest testing rates in the world. In India, only those people with a travel history to high-risk COVID-19 affected countries or with close contacts to laboratory confirmed COVID-19 cases and...

-The Hindu The panels are meant to monitor the implementation of SC, ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act The State-level committees meant to monitor the implementation of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 of 25 States and Union Territories had not met even once in three years — 2016, 2017 and 2018, according to information provided by the Union Social Justice and Empowerment Ministry to Parliament on Tuesday. Please...