India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on Tuesday, said that a lockdown in states should be the last resort. Multiple states in India have announced night curfews and weekend lockdowns in the past few weeks. Delhi has been put under a full lockdown till April 26. But lockdowns might not be enough. Here is why according to […]

It has been an unprecedented year. A year that has seen lockdowns, fear, migrant’s crisis, employment loss, economic recovery, vaccine, indifference, and we again stand at the cliff-edge – crossing 100k per day – a step further can mean a repeat cycle. COVID has brought to light and peeled-off, layer-by-layer, the inefficiencies that mar our […]

India is witnessing a sharp surge in Covid-19 cases with nearly 400,000 active cases in India. What is worrying is that this spike comes at a time when vaccine options are available and a high number of doses are being administered daily. No doubt, this is not enough. Distribution hurdles coupled with vaccine supply and […]

India will have to strengthen its testing, contact tracing and surveillance to prevent yet another wave of coronavirus infections as the country appears to be on the verge of a second covid-19 wave with cases surging unabated once again, said public health experts.

According to Health Ministry data, the number of people inoculated with the first dose of a Covid vaccine stood at 2.1 crore as on March 11. This means that 20.39 crore of the target population is yet to get the first dose, based on the median target population.

This is a harsh reminder that we are still very much in the pandemic and facing new challenges of foreign and now possibly local variants of the virus. We would possibly see a third wave if drastic measures to increase awareness among people are not taken. Focus has to be on prevention measures and social […]

In many parts of the country, the test positivity ratio has seen a considerable dip in the last few weeks. This clearly indicates that those parts have passed the peak for now, however, it does not indicate that worse is over. As we can see from Delhi, where the test positivity ratio was 5 around […]

Staggered classes and increasing school time, few classes on a given day would help in tackling most of the issues. Online classes can barely help children remain afloat which is why it is important to gradually and responsibly start opening of schools. This will not only help students recover the loss but also allow teachers to understand where children currently are in […]

India has the third-largest number of people with HIV, vulnerable populations that lack access to basic health care, and more than 39 million Indians fall into poverty each year due to medical costs. To address these challenges, USAID has been partnering the Indian government, the private sector, and civil society to strengthen the impact, reach, […]

It is important to gradually and responsibly start opening schools. This will not only help students to recover but also allow teachers to understand where children currently are in terms of learning levels. Children would certainly feel better being in their ‘community’ and in many cases, will get their due nutrition through mid-day-meal.

There is a clear trend of new Covid-19 infections declining in the country, with 45,321 cases reported in last 24 hours compared to the peak of 97,859 cases on September 16. However, the number of daily tests continue to grow at a lower rate. In the initial stages of the pandemic, there was an urgency […]

India on Monday crossed the milestone of having conducted 110 million covid-19 tests, but public health experts warned this wasn’t enough and that India needs to scale up testing rapidly in order to control the pandemic. India’s rate of testing remains one of the lowest in the world. It conducts 82,032 tests per 1 million […]