-Leaflet.in/ Newsclick.in The Supreme Court, in an order released on Sunday evening, directed the Central Government to ensure that the deficit in the supply of oxygen to the national capital is rectified within two days. It also directed the Centre to prepare, in collaboration with the states, a buffer stock of oxygen for emergency purposes and decentralize the location of the emergency stocks. “The emergency stocks shall be created within the next four...

-Economic and Political Weekly Editorial India has to substantially scale up its health infrastructure to protect lives and livelihoods. “The situation in India is a devastating reminder of what the virus can do,” said World Health Organization (WHO) Chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus at a virtual briefing in Geneva last week. He was speaking in the context of the WHO survey findings which noted that one year into the COVID-19 pandemic around 90%...

-The Hindu Business Line Kerala’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic has been the subject of international conversation about public health systems. Piloting Kerala’s fight against the pandemic is the State’s Health Minister and CPI(M)’s Central Committee member KK Shailaja who speaks exclusively to BusinessLine about the criticality of publicly-run healthcare and how the need of the hour is to nationalise the system. Excerpts: * What are the lessons to be learnt from...

-NDTV.com Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra were given more oxygen than they asked for, the Delhi High Court said. New Delhi: States like Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra were given more oxygen than they asked for, but Arvind Kejriwal government's repeated appeals were not granted, the Delhi High Court said today, questioning the Centre about the rationale involved. The Central Government has to either show justification for this or "make amends", said the two-judge...

-The Telegraph Health ministry asks for 15 samples each from five labs and five hospitals in every state every two weeks, which is less than the 5% prescribed for each state The Union health ministry has asked each state to send 150 Covid-positive samples fortnightly for genome sequencing, deviating from the original target set by a national research consortium to genome-sequence 5 per cent of positive cases from all states. The move has...