Poisonous snakebites have killed more than a million Indians in the last two decades, finds a recently published article entitled Trends in snakebite mortality in India from 2000 to 2019 in a nationally representative mortality study. Published in the open access journal elifesciences.org, the research-based study has found that the country accounts for nearly half the total number of annual deaths in the world caused by snakebite envenoming. Who are the...

-The Hindu Low level of RT-PCR re-testing in persons who are testing antigen negative will underestimate cases, says COVID-19 task force member Only 1 in 200 of those who tested negative in an antigen test in Delhi to detect possible coronavirus cases were re-tested, a fraction that epidemiologists say is too low given what is known about the disease. From June 25, daily cases appear to have peaked at 3,390 and steadily...

-Outlook India Eminent epidemiologist and health economist Dr Ramanan Laxminarayan tells Outlook in an exclusive interview why rapid Covid antigen tests are problematic and should not, in any case, replace the existing RT-PCR tests. While the Delhi government's data on Coronavirus cases shows a decline in the number of positive cases, experts believe that the real picture might not be what it looks like. Eminent epidemiologist Dr Ramanan Laxminarayan, who is also...

-Down to Earth Agriculture is the least-affected sector of the economy. It is poised to gain and lead economy’s revival process ‘Year of COVID-19’— this is how 2020 is probably going to be remembered. It has been more than six months that the novel coronavirus disease has been dominating public discourse, news cycles, internet searches and even geopolitics. As on July 8, 2020, India had more than 0.7 million cases. It was among...

-Down to Earth Several Saurashtra migrants who had returned to work in Surat in May-end said they have fallen back on land resources for agriculture The Saurashtra region in western Gujarat has been witnessing a second wave of reverse migration amid the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. Labourers employed in the diamond industry in Surat had first migrated back to their villages in Saurashtra when the Union government had first announced nationwide lockdown...