-Down to Earth Pandemic-induced poverty and rise in food prices keep healthy diet out of reach of three billion people Good food or just food? “Our choice is always the latter. We need to survive.” Sukru Ojha, the 56-year-old resident of Koraput, Odisha told Down To Earth in April in reply to a query on whether the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic-induced income loss impacted his food intake. Koraput is one of...

-TheWire.in/ PARI In Bihar's villages, during the lockdown last year, teenage girls were married off to young male migrant workers who returned home. Many are now pregnant and anxious about what comes next. Both are 17, both are pregnant. Both of them collapse easily into giggles, sometimes forgetting parental instructions to keep their gaze down. And both are terrified of what comes next. Salima Parveen and Asma Khatun (names changed) were both in...

The rise in COVID-19 daily new cases and daily new deaths compelled many state governments to impose local level lockdowns during April-May 2021. As of 20th April, 2021, partial lockdowns were noticed in 10 states across the country and complete lockdown was imposed in Delhi. As of 8th May, 2021, nearly the entire country was under complete lockdown as a result of either partial lockdowns and night curfews or complete...

-The Hindu 60,773 more fatalities during second wave. The number of “excess deaths” registered by the Civil Registration System (CRS) in Tamil Nadu ever since the COVID-19 pandemic hit (from April 2020 to May 2021) is 6.2 times the official reported figure of 24,232 deaths. But in data accessed by The Hindu, the CRS recorded the number of deaths due to COVID-19 as 35,807 (14,652 in 2020 and 21,155 till May 2021),...

-Financial Express If patents continue to determine global access to vaccines and drugs, then fighting Covid-19 will remain a distant dream for most countries Vaccines are badly required by the world, as are drugs like Remdesivir and Tocilizumab, and medical equipment like ventilators and oxygen concentrators. A large number of countries, particularly low- and middle-income ones, are struggling to access vaccines, drugs and equipment. There cannot be a more important occasion than the...