'One night in lockdown this April, George Kuruvilla was having dinner and watching the news when he fielded a phone call from a prospective supplier who talked up a tracking-wristband and accompanying software to ensure possible COVID-19 patients don’t violate their quarantine. What followed offers an illuminating insight into how India’s tech companies are turning India into a surveillance state one sales pitch at a time.
'There could not be a clearer indication of how bad the coronavirus crisis is going to get for Mumbai. On Monday, the 40th day of lockdown, the BMC was working feverishly to add new isolation beds, especially in the worst effected south-central Mumbai. Soon, one of Mumbai’s prettiest open spaces, the Mahalaxmi Racecourse will have a 200-bed isolation facility in its vast parking lot.
'It is a lonely Ramzan for 48-year-old Abdul Bari in Delhi. While his wife and four children tested positive for COVID-19 and are receiving treatment in hospitals in Delhi, he wished he would be able to spend time with his two kids, 13-year-old Zahra and 12-year-old Arshad Jamal, who tested negative at the Dwarka quaratine centre. "Both tested negative in their first test on 4 April and then the second one on 14 April. The 14 days of quarantine ended two weeks ago, it is over a month today. I do not even know who I can call and ask about them.
'The number of official Covid deaths in Malegaon in Maharashtra is just 12 since the first case in early April but, overall, the number of deaths in this city has shown an unusual surge. At 580 deaths for April, as per civic records obtained by The Indian Express, it’s almost twice the figure for the same month last year (277) and a 48 per cent jump over the number of deaths in March this year (see chart).
'Sheetal Pawar, who lives in Tamil Nadu’s Vellore, was in Mumbai’s Bhandup area to attend her sister’s wedding when the nationwide lockdown was announced in March. Pawar, a multidrug resistant tuberculosis patient, had sufficient medicines, but getting someone to administer a daily Amikacin injection, became impossible.
'On April 18, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal gave a 10-minute speech on the coronavirus situation in New Delhi. It was also live-streamed on YouTube. At the 2:00 mark, Kejriwal pointed out that some people in coronavirus hotspots area continue to step out on streets and visit their neighbours. He said in Hindi (from 2:00 to 2:44), “Yesterday in a containment zone at Jahangirpuri, 26 members from one community (translated from कुनबा) tested positive for corona… all members are from one family.
'Karnataka reported its 20th COVID-19 related death on Monday, and nine new coronavirus cases were confirmed in the state, taking the total number of infections to 512. As of Tuesday morning, as many as 193 people had been recovered. While a 50-year old COVID-19 patient allegedly committed suicide at a hospital, the Health Department has categorised it as "death due to non-COVID cause". Confirming the 20th COVID-19 death in the state, Medical Education Minister Sudhakar said the 57-year-old person was a resident of Aland and had tested positive on April 21...'
'A 12-year-old boy succumbed to 16 hours of excruciating pain in Agra after half-a-dozen nursing homes and hospitals allegedly refused to treat him, fearing that he might be Covid-19 positive. Nihal Singh, the deceased, was suffering from acute stomach pain. After being turned away from six private nursing homes and hospitals, when his father finally took him to the government-run S.N. Medical College, they were told that it was meant for Covid patients only and he would be treated in the same ward as these patients.
'When the Indian Council of Medical Research invited bids for the supply of rapid antibody test kits on March 25, it made an elementary mistake: it did not ask the bidding companies to produce an import licence. As a result, companies without a licence to import the kits submitted bids – and won. These distributing companies in turn subcontracted the order to an importer. This had a cascading effect on the price of the kits, with both the importer and the distributors factoring in a profit margin.
'In a move to check for community spread of COVID-19, Kerala has begun random testing of asymptomatic persons. The state has formulated a new testing plan to find ‘any undetected COVID-19 positivity among the general population of Kerala’. The state plans to test 3,000 samples from the general population and all these tests will use the RT-PCR (real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction) kit – considered the gold standard to detect SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes the COVID-19 disease.
