Doctors say it is only a matter of time before Covid sweeps India With its densely packed cities and under-funded medical system, India has little margin for error....... Cases of coronavirus in the world’s second-most populous country have ticked rapidly higher the past week, raising alarm over the ability of India, with its fragile health-care system and battered economy, to handle a virus crisis of the magnitude of China or Italy’s. While India has seen 27 deaths and just over 1,000 cases, experts fear the real tally could be much higher and say the disease is already spreading in the community. Authorities say there’s no evidence for this and have not significantly ramped up testing.
....... a place where the poor live in close quarters and the social distancing measures being advocated in the west are almost impossible...... epidemiologists say the numbers could be staggering. A University of Michigan-run study predicts the country could have 915,000 coronavirus infections by mid-May, more than the case load for the whole world right now
...... India is not looking hard enough for new cases, with one of the lowest testing rates in the world....... The country had tested just 35,000 people for coronavirus as of Sunday.... That’s despite 113 local government laboratories and as many as 47 private labs now authorized to process tests....... “I can’t see why India will be any different.” ..... Mass testing would be an unnecessary strain on resources, they say, with each test costing Rs 4,500 . Officials also say a ramp up in testing risks sparking a panic....... he and colleagues are seeing an influx of cold and flu cases...... the virus spreading to as much as 10% of the population -- some 130 million people. John worries the lockdown came too late.
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'It is like wartime': Arundhati Bhattarcharya backs strong, radical measures to save economy Former State Bank of IndiaNSE -5.23 % chief Arundhati Bhattacharya has called for very strong, radical reforms to deal with the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic.
G20 FMs, central bank governors decide on joint effort The ministers decided on delivering a joint G20 Action Plan, which will outline the individual and collective actions that G20 has taken and will be taking to respond to the pandemic, while also highlighting the medium-term measures needed to support the global economy during and after this phase.
View: India isn't US, it must get its people back to work as soon as possible Low income countries have a more fragile economic and social fabric than developed countries........ Just outside my home in Delhi, migrant workers flow by all day, their fates unclear. They are walking home to villages near Lucknow, Kanpur and points beyond, jammed together in packs. None knew when their next meal would come or how long it would take to get home. Almost all said they understand why the government locked down the country to contain a deadly disease. If they die of hunger on the road or when they get home jobless, they say, it doesn’t matter....... New Delhi imposed the strictest lockdown measures in the world, designed to keep1.3 billion people at home, on the logic that if the pandemic gets out of control, India’s frail healthcare system won’t be able to cope. It was hard to imagine the exact economic fallout. But harrowing images of migrant workers flooding out of the major cities by the tens of thousands have made the unintended consequences painfully clear...... In India, it is the normally probusiness upper class that wants to keep stringent containment measures in place for as long as it takes to control the virus. Left wing intellectuals call this approach a “socioeconomic purge”, which will save only those who can afford to isolate themselves. The rest risk death by starvation if not the pandemic.
........ In the US and Europe laid off workers can file immediately for unemployment benefits, and some European governments are now funding companies to keep employees on the payroll through the pandemic......... social distancing is impractical in poor, crowded societies, most sub-Saharan nations have not imposed lockdown. ...... Even China’s authoritarian regime, which effectively sealed off Hubei province and its population of 60 million, would have been hard pressed to extend the lockdown nationwide. Now, it is rapidly lifting those restrictions, at the calculated risk of a second wave of infections arising from returning workers...... mass unemployment and poverty also raise mortality rates, and that a lockdown induced economic depression could conceivably prove more deadly than the virus.
...... It is fine to junk pre-crisis deficit targets but not basic economics...... The hope is that the measures the government has already taken and the notion that warm weather slows the spread of coronavirus will prevent the virus from spreading at an exponential rate. If that hope proves mistaken, it will be very difficult to change course. But for now the government should be thinking about ways to ease the nationwide lockdown when it expires on April 15.
View: GoI needs to collect & analyse patient dataset to generate policy insights
Asia's largest slum Dharavi reports first coronavirus casualty The 56-year-old victim with no travel history owned a garment shop in the area...... Over a million people live in the 5 square km maze of dirty lanes of Dharavi, in cramped huts and next to open sewers.
Trump urged to pause H1B visa programme after job loss amidst layoffs A body representing American tech workers has urged Trump to suspend for this year the H-1B visa program.
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Sino-India ties will emerge stronger, scale new heights after COVID-19 pandemic: China Both the counties have finalised an ambitious 70 celebratory activities, a host of cultural, religious and trade promotion activities round the year besides military exchanges to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the establishment of their diplomatic relations...... at their second informal meeting in the Indian city of Chennai to properly manage their differences on border issues and maintain peace and tranquility in the region..... "China and India are the only two countries in the world with more than 1 billion people each. As long as one third of the global population can join hands, they can yield more benefits for not only themselves but also the wider world. The ongoing (coronavirus) epidemic fight offers a chance to do exactly that"
25,000 NCC cadets, retired military health professionals, 8,500 army doctors on standby, while 9000 forces’ hospital beds provided for coronavirus pandemic
Six COVID-19 patients die in Maharashtra, toll rises to 16
God goes online as places of worship shut doors to save people All major religious institutions are opening up online channels to stay connected with their devotees........ The muezzin calls out the faithful to prayer five times a day. But nobody comes to the mosque. These days, devotees spread out janamaz in the confines of their homes to pray. This, perhaps, is happening for the first time in 1391 years of Cheraman Juma Masjid
in Kerala, where an azaan has not beckoned believers to the mosque. ..... the oldest mosque in Indian sub-continent...... we’re live streaming the daily rituals on Facebook for our devotees… These bits are getting a lot of view these days – especially from devotees residing abroad .... The Our Lady of Good Health Basilica at Velankanni (Tamil Nadu) attracts over 2 crore visitors every year. The church, which remained open even in the aftermath of 2004 tsunami (which caused the death of over 500 pilgrims), is shut for the first time in 50 years. The authorities have decided to conduct the ‘Mass’ indoors, and stopped ‘baptism’ and ‘confirmation’ rituals. ..... “The priests are conducting Mass two times a day… The morning Mass – at 6AM – is live telecast on the Church website and on Youtube.
We’re witnessing a lot of visitors on our Youtube channel these days,” affirms Fr. A. Anto Jesuraj of the Velankanni church..... “There are 600 hotels here, employing thousands of people; all are shut now… The flower and fruit-sellers are not open anymore; this putting pressure on farmers who are sitting on piles of perishable stock. There are roughly 1000 beggars who live on alms given by devotees who come here… Now they don’t even get food to eat,” says Yadav..... The lockdown to prevent the spread of Coronavirus is almost total in all towns that huddle around important religious centres. Poor locals who earn their livelihood selling flowers, fruits, chaadars and incense sticks are now a worried lot. With no devotees around, only prayers may help them tide over.
Ready to help India to procure ventilators, but scaling-up production a challenge: China A number of countries including the US and India, are trying to procure ventilators needed for hospitals to deal with the demand caused by the coronavirus outbreak. Chinese ventilator producers say it is not easy for them to ramp up production as they also needed imported components.
Five more test positive; COVID-19 count rises to 46 in Punjab
India's response to Covid-19 has been pre-emptive, pro-active: Roderico Ofrin, WHO India's response to Covid-19 has been pre-emptive, pro-active and graded with high-level political commitment. India has shown ‘whole of government’ approach and is adopting ‘whole-of society approach', said WHO regional emergencies director of South-East Asia, Roderico Ofrin
ER doctor on coronavirus: What needs to happen now — a 5 week national quarantine Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House’s coronavirus response coordinator, expressed recently that 200,000 Americans could die even “if we do things perfectly." However, the Society of Critical Care Medicine has projected that more than 960,000 people in the United States may require ventilators during the course of this pandemic. ...... we may see over 600,000 deaths in the United States
by the time this pandemic is over, and those numbers may increase if we are unable to produce enough ventilators for our response. .......... Federal officials have plucked the low-hanging fruit of mitigation — and now it’s time to reach deeper and enact a national quarantine. ...... This isn't my first time on the front lines of a war. This isn't my first time on the front lines of a war. I’ve also served on the front lines in Afghanistan. I have seen firsthand — and personally treated — hundreds of combat casualties. What we’re going to experience over the next few weeks will be much worse.. ........ unless this nation’s lawmakers can coordinate a national mass quarantine — for a minimum of five weeks — we will face an enemy that our system is unprepared to fight, and we will lose.
Five weeks is needed to overcome the long incubation period of this virus which can range anywhere from three to 12 days. ....... asymptomatic individuals may be contributing to this pandemic in a very significant way. Social distancing measures fail because we feel comfortable letting our guard down around asymptomatic individuals.
The coronavirus drama, with 180,000 cases, rather than the 15 at the time Trump made his “close to zero” prediction, is still closer to the beginning than the end.
....... he could easily end up keeping company historically with Hoover (who promised that “prosperity is around the corner”) and Lyndon B. Johnson (whose Vietnam generals fantasized about “light at the end of the tunnel”) as presidents who arrived in office with outsized personalities that shriveled as they failed to meet the political, practical, ultimately psychic needs of a nation in crisis.
expert predictions regarding a fall comeback for the virus.
......... a predicted larger peak epidemic later in the year: The more successful a strategy is at temporary suppression, the larger the later epidemic is predicted to be in the absence of vaccination, due to lesser build-up of herd immunity.” ...... The outcome of nationwide fall school shutdown would be disastrous: working parents will lose jobs to non-parents, and of those who do go to work, many will leave their younger children at home with older, more vulnerable adults — the exact opposite of a responsible aim at containing the virus. ........ What makes this such an unprecedented moment is that we are doing this to ourselves. The virus is not turning off the economy — we are turning it off to get ahead of the virus. But a modern capitalist economy cannot afford to turn itself off for 60 days or more at the whims of politicians more afraid of getting criticized by the national media than actually responding to the situation on the ground. ....... unless they are given a clear idea of a path forward by leaders in the public and private sector who chart our way back from potential economic ruin. ...... We must be able to care for the sick and protect the vulnerable without killing our economy. And we must give citizens confidence that as we get past the worst of this pandemic, the economy will reopen and rise toward a level that allows Americans to continue to work and thrive as a nation of free people.
