-Hindustan Times Earlier this week, the ministry released a user manual for online submission of an undertaking on no increase in pollution load due to expansion, on its Parivesh website. The environment ministry has allowed companies operating in several industries, including some polluting ones, to expand capacities on the basis of a self-CERTification that this will not “increase the pollution load”, creating the room for potential misdeclaration (and misuse), especially in light...

-Hindustan Times There has been shocking, collective policy failure. Focus on controlling the spread of infections, taking care of the ill, vaccination, and genome sequencing now There are four factors why the second wave has hit India with such intensity. First, the variants. The B.1.1.7, the one from the United Kingdom (UK), is present in parts of northern India. B.1.617, sometimes known as the “double mutant”, is pervasive in many places across India....

-The Indian Express In the last 10 days, from April 18 to April 27, as many as 3,049 died of Covid. And an almost equal number, 3909, died suspected to have had Covid. The harrowing images playing out from cities and towns across the country show mourners lined up outside crematoriums, rows of funeral pyres burning with hardly a break, last-rites arrangements being hurriedly scrambled for the rising number of dead. In the...

-The Hindu Business Line Kerala’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic has been the subject of international conversation about public health systems. Piloting Kerala’s fight against the pandemic is the State’s Health Minister and CPI(M)’s Central Committee member KK Shailaja who speaks exclusively to BusinessLine about the criticality of publicly-run healthcare and how the need of the hour is to nationalise the system. Excerpts: * What are the lessons to be learnt from...

-The Telegraph Health ministry asks for 15 samples each from five labs and five hospitals in every state every two weeks, which is less than the 5% prescribed for each state The Union health ministry has asked each state to send 150 Covid-positive samples fortnightly for genome sequencing, deviating from the original target set by a national research consortium to genome-sequence 5 per cent of positive cases from all states. The move has...