'Aarogya Setu, a Government of India app to track the real-time movements of citizens to determine if they have been in the proximity of COVID-19 patients, vastly expands the surveillance capabilities of the state with few explicit safeguards warned privacy experts and cybersecurity analysts.
'The health ministry, citing the Covid-19 pandemic, has suspended until June 30 rules governing the law that bans prenatal sex disclosure, stirring concerns that this could be misused by unscrupulous clinics and exacerbate selective abortion of female foetuses. The ministry in an April 4 notification suspended certain rules under the Prenatal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of Sex Selection) Rules, 1996, until June 30 this year, citing the “emergency situation” due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the nationwide lockdown...'
'A Dubai resident has blamed ‘coronavirus paranoia’ for his father’s death in Madhya Pradesh, India, last week. Moeen Ali, 39, said his father Sayyed Aashiq Ali, 65, was suffering from breathlessness caused by a heart ailment yet no private hospital in his hometown would admit him over coronavirus fears.
'Like the rest of the world, India is battling the coronavirus pandemic. However, here the public conversation over the past week has focussed inordinately on only one facet of the disease: its link with the Tablighi Jamat, a Muslim religious group. A Tablighi Jamat event, held in early March in Delhi, was attended by foreign delegates from South East Asia as well as members from all over India. A few attendees, it later turned out, were coronavirus carriers. When the event finished, many people went back to their home states, carrying the virus with them.
'Last week, a group of seven accredited social health activists, or ASHAs, were asked to visit 300 houses in Bengaluru’s Gauripada. The Bengaluru corporation’s health department instructed them to “impart information” on Covid-19 after a person in the area showed symptoms of the virus and was sent to a hospital to be tested. Nagalaxmi V, 43, was one of the ASHAs deputed for this purpose. They had received no specific training on how to go about it, she said, and relied on pamphlets handed to them by the health department.
'A 35-year-old man who had self-isolated after having cough and cold, hanged himself in Jamalpur village here, with the police suspecting that he acted out of the fear of having contracted the novel coronavirus. Rajendra took the extreme step at his in-laws' house on Saturday...'
'BMC has declared Wockhardt Hospital a containment zone after 26 nurses and three doctors tested positive for Covid-19 over a week. Nobody would be allowed to enter or leave the Mumbai Central hospital till everyone in it tests negative twice consecutively, a civic official said... Wockhardt staff have alleged that the infection spread rapidly as the hospital didn't quarantine the colleagues and roommates of the infected nurses. The United Nurses' Association said they were not tested or removed from shifts till symptoms emerged - a charge the hospital has denied.
'A 25-year-old village resident reported sick at the Basti district hospital on March 28. For more than two days, he was shunted from ward to ward and hospital to hospital before he finally died in Gorakhpur, the largest city in eastern Uttar Pradesh, 70 km from Basti. He would be the first confirmed coronavirus casualty in the state. The 48 hours leading up to his death paint a grim picture of provincial India’s health infrastructure and bare the lack of preparedness or even training to handle the pandemic...'
'The Press Council of India on Friday asked the print media to stop the publicity and advertisement of AYUSH-related claims for COVID-19 treatment in order to prevent dissemination of misleading information about AYUSH drugs and services.
'After Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s video conference with the chief ministers on April 2 to tackle COVID-19 epidemic, the Centre has approved for the release – in advance – of Rs 1,611 crore to Maharashtra under the State Disaster Risk Management Fund (SDRMF) to fight the disease as it has reported the highest number of such cases so far. According to a news report in The Hindu, however, Kerala, which has registered one of the highest number of coronavirus cases across the country, has been allocated only Rs 157 crore – much less than most states...'
