India Coronavirus Dispatch: Recovery rate in West Bengal dips sharply

'Colourful' initiative to tackle Covid-19 in Andhra, hand sanitiser makers under govt scanner, and why it's time to flatten pandemic stereotyping-a roundup news on how India is dealing with Covid-19

Interview

India will be lucky if we finish at 10 million Covid-19 cases: As Covid-19 cases spike across parts of the country, Mumbai, Delhi and Chennai collectively account for about two thirds of India’s cases. Health infrastructure has been sorely tested and has led to a clash between private healthcare providers and the state and central establishment. What are hospitals bracing for in the months to come and where have fault lines shown up? Watch this interview with Shobana Kamineni, execu-tive vice-chairperson at the Apollo Hospitals Group and former president of CII, who says India would be lucky if it finishes at 1 crore cases of Covid-19 nationwide. Watch here

Managing Covid-19 

Covid recovery rate in Bengal dips sharply in past 2 weeks, experts unable to find reason: The recovery rate in West Bengal has gone downhill since the last two weeks, while the rate of infection has been increasing — and all these when the city is facing an acute shortage of beds in both gov-ernment and private hospitals. In the last two weeks, from 30 June to 14 July, Bengal’s discharge/recovery rate has fallen from 66.48 per cent to 60 per cent. In Kolkata, it has nosedived from 64 per cent to 56 per cent, according to state government data. Read more here. 
 

Hand sanitiser makers under govt scanner after complaints of ‘substandard’ products: The central government has started a drive to check samples of hand sanitisers across the country, fol-lowing complaints of substandard products being sold in the market. State drug regulators have col-lected samples of hand-sanitisers manufactured by all kinds of companies — from local units to top brands such as Dettol, Himalaya, Godrej, Savlon, Odonil and Elder Pharmaceuticals — to check their quality. While the drive started last month, the total number of samples collected is yet to be ascertained. Read more here. 
 

As classes go online, how can the Right to Education be guaranteed for students without net access? As the rights-based framework completed a decade, elementary education in government schools, especially for children from rural areas and the urban poor, is witnessing unprecedented times due to challenges posed by the pandemic. With schools closed due to physical distancing norms, education has gone online. Can internet-based learning be an alternative for children study-ing in government schools, and can the education under the RTE Act actually be provided to those who lack access to technology and the internet? Read more here.
 

Andhra Pradesh’s Srikakulam district launches ‘colourful’ initiative to tackle Covid-19: At a time when states across the country are battling the coronavirus pandemic and thinking of strategies to bring down the surging numbers, Srikakulam district in Andhra Pradesh has launched an initiative that is not only innovative, but also colourful. The initiative is to monitor the spread of COVID-19 in the district. Read more here.
 

Opinion 

It’s time to flatten the pandemic stereotyping: The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare had urged the citizens to “not label any community or area for the spread of Covid-19”. State and local governments are undertaking testing drives to identify the infected among these groups. But by simply excluding those found positive from their livelihoods, and providing them no other form of support, they are failing to protect them from the consequences of negative stereotyping and marginality. Read more here. 
 

Understanding Covid-19

The progress made so far by Moderna, Oxford University: In the hunt for a vaccine against Covid-19, encouraging news emerged about two candidates on Wednesday. The New England Journal of Medicine published an interim analysis describing an immune response generated in participants of phase I clinical trials for a candidate vaccine, developed by US-based biotech company Moderna. Meanwhile, ITV reported that there could be positive news, possibly by Thursday, on initial trials of another candidate vaccine, from the University of Oxford. Read more here. 

Anxiety a symptom of the virus in Covid patients? Yes, says study: Depressed mood or anxiety exhibited in Covid-19 patients may possibly be a sign the virus affects the central nervous system, according to a new study. The findings, published in the journal The Laryngoscope, revealed that these two psychological symptoms were most closely associated with a loss of smell and taste rather than the more severe indicators of the novel coronavirus such as shortness of breath, cough or fever. Read more here. 
 

How to detect coronavirus in diluted gargle samples: Scientists in Germany have reported a novel method for detecting SARS-CoV-2. Using mass spectrometry on gargle solutions of Covid-19 patients, pharmacists at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) succeeded in detecting small amounts of the coronavirus. The novel method is currently undergoing improvements; initial results have been published in the Journal of Proteome Research. The researchers suggest the method might supplement conventional tests, and be available as standard diagnostic tool for Covid-19 in the future. Read more here. 

How will a nasal Covid-19 vaccine work, which firms are developing it? While most of the 160 Covid-19 vaccine candidates under various stages of development are conventional intramuscular injection, several research groups and firms, including in the United States, Canada and India, are working on nasal coronavirus vaccines. Instead of a jab into the upper arm, these types of vaccines will be delivered to the respiratory tract, either via a nasal spray or aerosol delivery. Read more here.