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...

-NDTV The government is taxing people who buy Covid-related medical drugs like Remdesivir and others, as well as taxing the supplements and medical grade oxygen for oxygen cylinders, with a tax as high as 12 per cent. New Delhi: Indian and global medical experts are shocked at the Indian government making money off the sick and dying. Every expert consulted for this report said this has to stop. A family that buys an...

-The Hindu ‘This indicates the extent of reverse migration from lockdown States to native States’ The demand for MGNREGA work so far in the month of April has increased to 2.57 crore households, 92% higher than a year ago, and a record high for April since 2013, as per State Bank of India (SBI) research. “This indicates the extent of reverse migration from the lockdown States to their native States,” SBI group chief...

-Newslaundry.com The Standing Committee on Health highlighted shortages of medical oxygen and hospital beds. The government seems to have ignored its report. As the second wave of the pandemic rips through the country, the public is asking two big questions. How prepared was the government? Did it anticipate a crisis of this magnitude to hit India? Turns out, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Health and Family Welfare produced a report in which it...

-The Indian Express Is the government postponing the use of the Rs 35,000-crore allocated for vaccine development in the current Budget? Has it been shy in using its good offices with the US to intercede on behalf of the country’s vaccine manufacturing companies? This time, last year, India was under a lockdown announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a televised address during which he issued several messages of caution. He talked...