'A half-filled drum of water measuring about 25 litres is all Rekha has left for her family of six living in a slum cluster near south Delhi’s Mahipalpur. For the past three days, she said, her son and nephew have been unsuccessful in reaching a nearby, privately owned borewell from where they get their daily supply, because of police heavy handedness. “There is not a drop of water left here,” said the 35-year-old, referring to the jhuggi jhopri cluster of about a 100 families that are involved in waste picking in Mahipalpur.
'With his first speech on the coronavirus, Prime Minister Narendra Modi got us to scare evil spirits away by having people bang the hell out of their pots and pans. With his second, he scared the hell out of all of us. With not a word on how the public, particularly the poor, are to access food and other essentials in coming weeks, it sparked off a panic waiting to happen. The middle classes thronged the stores and markets – something not easy for the poor. Not for migrants leaving the cities for their villages. Not for small vendors, domestic help, agricultural labourers.
'Anger is simmering in Goa, India’s smallest state, whose chief minister is keen to ensure a 100% lockdown including cracking down on the supply of daily essentials like milk and bread as the lockdown has begun to affect not just stranded tourists and homeless but even middle class households. With Chief Minister Pramod Sawant’s grand plan for home delivery proving to be a non-starter, the opposition has approached the Governor’s office seeking his intervention. A group of residents has approached the High Court while still others are baying for the Chief Minister to resign...'
'Derek Gomes is 77 years old and needs kidney dialysis three times a week. His wife Jennifer Gomes depends on auto rickshaws to take him to the Nanavati Hospital, four km away from their flat in Khar in Mumbai. But she is worried she won’t find one for the next 21 days. Prabir Kumar Banerjee, 79, needs to complete his four-month-long chemotherapy cycle for bone marrow cancer. The resident of Faridabad, Haryana, has appointments at the Apollo Hospital in Delhi on March 25 and April 1.
'For the past one week, 32-year-old Shraddha Kejriwal who runs a merchandising business in Pune has been waking up with nightmares. "I am unable to deal with this idea of an uncertain future," she said. Shraddha battles with anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder. She is immunocompromised too. The spread of the deadly novel coronavirus that has now forced large parts of the country to go under lockdown, she said, has taken a big toll on her mental health...
'In a case of media vigilantism, a reporter from news channel Republic TV was spotted live on March 24 standing by a team of policemen at the DND flyover which connects Delhi to Noida in Uttar Pradesh, heckling a doctor on his way to work for ‘violating the lockdown’. When the senior doctor, Anish Singhal, who is the director and medical superintendent of the Employees State Insurance Corporation (ESIC) Hospital in Noida, showed the reporter his identity card, the reporter termed it ‘fake’. In fact, the channel ran a banner which said, “A man shows fake ID card and tries to venture out”.
'Health workers on duty in villages and district hospitals across rural Kashmir lack personal protection equipment (PPE), making them vulnerable to infection and crippling their ability to work normally amidst the coronavirus outbreak. PPE consists of gloves, masks, eye protection device, and the hazmat cover-all suits worn to protect health care workers from getting infected. These workers pleaded that rural hospitals be supplied with better protective gear to enable doctors and paramedical staff work smoothly.
'When H. received an urgent message from the hospital on Monday night asking her to come in to work, she knew it would be bad. The world was in the grips of a pandemic, and her home state in south India had discovered 22 positive cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. For weeks, the hospital where she worked had been all hands on deck — even doctors not treating coronavirus patients were required to take throat and nose swabs, check symptoms, and decide who needed medical assistance.
'Emergency procurement of personal protective equipment—or PPE—such as masks, gloves and respirators for healthcare workers, remain stalled. PPE manufacturers are opposing the Indian government’s decision to centralise procurement through HLL Lifecare Limited, a government-owned company that has been granted the monopoly over the procurement of PPE kits. Officials from the ministry of health, the ministry of textiles, and representatives of HLL met twice on 23 March to iron out problems caused by the monopoly, the delays in supply of PPE kits, as well as lockdown.
'As the first COVID-19 case was officially confirmed from Srinagar on Wednesday and the Valley was subsequently locked down again, the doctors, healthcare workers, researchers and students in Kashmir are taking to social media to raise concerns about restricted information due to slow speed internet. They’re demanding restoration of full-speed 4G internet so that people can be better informed and get critical information about the coronavirus pandemic. “This is so frustrating. Trying to download the guidelines for intensive care management as proposed by doctors in England.
