-Press release by National Coalition on the Education Emergency (NCEE) dated January 22, 2022 Schools in Bengaluru remain closed while malls, theatres, pubs and restaurants have been kept open. As of 21 January, the weekend curfew has been lifted as well. The decision to keep schools closed is having catastrophic consequences on children. Schools had only recently started opening after remaining mostly closed since March 2020. Their being closed again spells...

-The Telegraph They say the revised testing guidelines that exempt asymptomatic contacts from tests are suited only for omicron, which is linked to mild disease and rapid spread A mix of narrower targeted Covid-19 testing, home-based self-testing kits and large cities approaching epidemic peaks might explain falling counts of daily new infections nationwide, doctors and health experts said on Tuesday. India’s daily count of new Covid-19 infections fell to around 238,000 for the...

-PTI/ The Tribune The report says no evidence that reopening schools has caused a surge in Covid cases and that schools are not a “safe place” New Delhi: There is no justification now for keeping schools closed in view of the Covid-19 pandemic and even if there are new waves, closing schools should be the last resort, according to World Bank’s Global Education Director Jaime Saavedra. Saavedra, whose team has been tracking the...

-The Hindu India records 2,59,291 new cases on Thursday Like every wave in the past, cases fuelled by the Omicron variant of COVID-19 have initially spread only in the urban areas. However, many rural and semi-rural places recorded a sharp spike in infections in the past week. At the start of this year, 50% of the cases were from urban centres such as Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai and Kolkata. However, the share reduced to...

-The Telegraph  The trends so far are in line with observations from South Africa, where demand has been lower during omicron-driven surge The demand for oxygen beds and ventilators for Covid-19 patients appears for now decoupled from the steep rise in cases and hospitalisation, doctors said on Sunday, citing early observations over the past week in Calcutta, Delhi and Mumbai. The counts of hospitalised Covid-19 patients have increased in all three cities, but...