After the outbreak of COVID-19 in China during early January this year and its dissemination globally within a few days, health experts have suggested ways to check its spread exponentially among the rest of the population. In the age of internet connectivity, work-from-home and self-isolation have been advised as solutions to ensure social distancing and avoid large-scale social gatherings. Experts have asked governments and private enterprises to keep people at...

-The Hindu Kerala’s rationale for revising its COVID-19 testing guidelines could prove counterproductive Even as the World Health Organization has been urging countries that have reported many laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 cases to become more aggressive in testing, India continues to have among the lowest testing rates in the world. In India, only those people with a travel history to high-risk COVID-19 affected countries or with close contacts to laboratory confirmed COVID-19 cases and...

-Statement on the COVID-19 pandemic by Jan Swasthya Abhiyan (JSA) and All India People’s Science Network(AIPSN), March 2020 A charter of demands by the Jan Swasthya Abhiyan and All India People’s Science Network. From January 30, when the first case of Covid-19 was reported, till today, March 15, the number of confirmed cases in India has risen to 110, and there have been two deaths. The Government of India has reacted swiftly...

-The Indian Express All comparisons between COVID-19 and TB end with the superficial observation that they are both deadly respiratory tract infections. The world has been spooked by COVID-19, the novel flu-like virus which emerged from the slaughter-houses of China and is now sweeping across the planet, propelled by the very engine of the global economy that it now threatens to pull asunder. Thanks to the waves of news engulfing us, including...

-The Indian Express Threat from coronavirus is real, demands vigilance. But responses to it are bordering on paranoia. In The Plague, Albert Camus describes the French town of Oran, which is swept by a plague leading to the death of thousands of inhabitants. Camus’s novel is the story of a community struck by a destructive force, to which it refuses to surrender. The outbreak of the COVID-19 Novel Coronavirus epidemic and the...