-Down to Earth India’s cumulative COVID-19 deaths are 6-7 times higher than reported officially, says analysis India’s death count for COVID-19 is a mystery for many experts. As of January 6, India reported a total of 346.76 deaths per million, which is much lower than that in rich countries such as the United States (2,505.11 deaths per million) and the United Kingdom (2,193.76 deaths per million).  The country’s cumulative number of deaths has...

-Livemint.com A new paper suggests the second covid-19 wave had a more fatal impact on Chennai’s poorer neighbourhoods than richer ones Poorer communities saw far more excess deaths during the pandemic than richer neighbourhoods, evidence from a new Chennai-based study shows. Taken with data from other parts of the country, the findings suggest that India’s poor, particularly the elderly, may have disproportionately borne the burden of the pandemic’s fatal impact. In a study...

-The Telegraph Given hospitalisation trends in the West, we may not see extreme pressures on hospitals as during second wave, say experts Indian health officials are monitoring Covid-19 hospitalisation rates in South Africa and Europe to try and predict how omicron-fuelled surges might impact the demand for critical care beds in India. The early signals appear to uncouple deaths from infection spikes. The daily new cases in South Africa, Denmark, Norway and the...

The increase in the total number of suicides committed in India during 2020 in comparison to the previous years has hit the headlines recently. While some media commentators have stated that the economic distress (caused by job loss, income loss, failure of business, and growing hunger, among other things) in 2020 could have led to more suicides being committed, others have said that home isolation and deteriorating mental health (associated...

-TheWire.in A new report has studied 17 alleged extrajudicial killings in the state between March 2017 and March 2018, and found that no police officers have been held accountable in any of them. New Delhi: A new report by civil society organisations has highlighted how a culture of impunity is allegedly being pushed at all levels after ‘extrajudicial killings’ in Uttar Pradesh, with the police regularly being let off the hook for...