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At least 20 people have been arrested in south India for violently preventing the burial of a prominent doctor who died with Covid-19.
Dr Simon Hercules' friends and family were attacked by a mob with sticks and rods when they took his body to a burial ground in Chennai on Sunday night.
Resident nearby were worried that buying bodies of patients who died with coronavirus would help spread the disease, police said.
One of his friends had to quietly bury him in the early hours of Monday without any family members present.
"He was not shown even basic humanity. Even his wife and son couldn't be there to say goodbye," Dr Pradeep told the News Minute website.
But South Indians on this forum claim be way more sensible than north Indians
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">A village in Chittapur of Kalburgi - deemed hotspot for <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/COVID19?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#COVID19</a>- violates lockdown restrictions to host Siddhalingeswara chariot festival as 100s gather. Kalburgi reported d first <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/COVID19?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#COVID19</a> death in d country. Death toll in district now at 3 with 18 active cases<a href="https://twitter.com/XpressBengaluru?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@XpressBengaluru</a> <a href="https://t.co/Wx6uF31DXG">pic.twitter.com/Wx6uF31DXG</a></p>— Anusha Ravi Sood (@anusharavi10) <a href="https://twitter.com/anusharavi10/status/1250740796183085056?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 16, 2020</a></blockquote>
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Large gathering.
Don’t know why but it seems in India Covid19 testing numbers are plateauing. Is it scarcity of kits? We are losing crores and crores due to lockdown but with no exponential rising in testing numbers it becomes a waste.
I don’t believe they are producing 150k a week yet. They were in talks with Serum to enhance their production numbers but there has no updates if that has gone ahead successfully. There are a few more articles on supply chain issues, which could be hampering themThey did 35000 on Monday and around 26500 on Tuesday, Tuesday testing was less because of faulty kits.
I think there are less kits available so they can't afford to go over 40000 in a day, MYlabs is going to increase production soon so situation may get better, right now they are producing 150000 a week.
Indian low numbers in death and infection are costing them big times as labs across the world are saying India don't need urgent kits now, they are sending to UK, USA, Spain etc because situation there is more worst
[MENTION=76058]cricketjoshila[/MENTION] Your silence is)
Is this person on twitter a fake? Or known for her agenda. Please shed some of your priceless gems here.
Have always maintained this. The lockdown was done without giving it any thought and planning. Even after a month of lockdown, we are nowhere near to tame it. On the other hand, there are so many people who have suffered immensely due to this hastily imposed lockdown.
If only lockdown could defeat this virus!
Looks like ratio has slightly increased but the testing has also increased.
ratio stands at 3.6%
Only two options, either go for lockdown and delay it's peak by getting patients before lockdown ends or go for herd immunity and ready to sacrifice 2 to 4 percent population.Sure mate, if not lockdown what do you recommend? Please don’t say enforce social distancing as even with a lockdown we see that’s impossible. You can say the central government has not planned things well, but almost all countries around the world are locked down. There is no real substitute to that.
Not to forget how badly our small scale industries and so many other small businesses and occupations are hit.
Lockdown was required but not what we have in India. It was totally without any direction, thought, planning.
How can someone forget about our crores of poor and underprivileged while saying, stay where ever you are? Is it that easy for so many who used to eat whatever they earned during the day?
Seriously? This lockdown has only
gone on to enhance their troubles while may not have helped us much in finding
any tangible solutiona due to our rhetorical dispensation.
Lockdown was required but not what we have in India. It was totally without any direction, thought, planning.
How can someone forget about our crores of poor and underprivileged while saying, stay where ever you are? Is it that easy for so many who used to eat whatever they earned during the day?
Seriously? This lockdown has only
gone on to enhance their troubles while may not have helped us much in finding
any tangible solutiona due to our rhetorical dispensation.
Rosy picture painted by you is insult to those people who died due to pig headedness of this regime. Not for the first time that happened, won’t be the last time either. So many helpless people have to suffer due to illiteracy and megalomaniac nature of one idiot.You should goto villages and the remote areas to see how the system is actually working. I am surprised you are criticizing so much of the policies yet, you lack basics of how it is being implemented.
It's really an insult to the people who is trying their best to provide the poor with resources provided from the govt.
Rosy picture painted by you is insult to those people who died due to pig headedness of this regime. Not for the first time that happened, won’t be the last time either. So many helpless people have to suffer due to illiteracy and megalomaniac nature of one idiot.
As for basics, save me the sermons, I know where they are coming from.
I know enough number of villagers who are hugely inconvenienced by this totally directionless and unplanned act. I have seen so many migrants who are stuck at isolation camps where the conditions are worse than hell.
I have seen so many businesses around me shutting shop overnight. Do you even know their plight? No you don’t.
Start? Have stated the same at quite a few places in quite a few threads. Can't be bothered to list them out again.
As for inconvenience, you possibly couldn't decipher simple English, so forget it.
However, one fresh start could be pradhan sevak not keeping himself at forefront of something which he doesn't have any idea about. One more will be less of his nautanki and more of substantial measures on the ground like procurement of PPE and test kits, something which he was exporting as late as till 20 March. There are so many medicos who are treating patients in raincoats.
Announce something substantial for small scale industries and for lowest strata of society.
There are so many people whose existence has escaped this sarkar's attention.
So many people are still going hungry despite tall claims by all governments in India of having fed crores of Indians every day. So many people aren't getting any ration just because they don't have a ration card.
Lol and the clown was asking private sector enterprises, factories etc to pay full wages of their employees.India freezes salary rises for more than 11 million to combat coronavirus
India has frozen inflation-linked increases in salaries and pensions for more than 11 million federal employees and pensioners to generate nearly $10 billion to help combat the coronavirus outbreak, officials said.
Last month, the government announced a 4 per cent rise in allowances for employees and pensioners with effect from January, estimated to have cost 271 billion rupees ($3.56 billion) in the current financial year beginning April. That rise will not now go ahead.
Reuters quoted a finance ministry official as saying: "The total savings could be more than 700 billion rupees ($9.19bn) from an 18-month freeze."
India reports second biggest daily spike as cases soar
With 1,486 new infections confirmed on Wednesday, India has seen its second sharpest daily spike.
The health ministry also said 49 people had died in the last 24 hours, taking the total death toll to 681.
With the new cases, the total official tally in India has crossed 20,000 infections.
The sharpest spike yet was reported on Monday, when authorities said more than 1,500 people tested positive.
But there is also some good news. Officials have said that the doubling rate - the number of days it takes for infections to multiply by two - had increased to almost eight days, up from 3.4 days before the lockdown.
India freezes salary rises for more than 11 million to combat coronavirus
India has frozen inflation-linked increases in salaries and pensions for more than 11 million federal employees and pensioners to generate nearly $10 billion to help combat the coronavirus outbreak, officials said.
Last month, the government announced a 4 per cent rise in allowances for employees and pensioners with effect from January, estimated to have cost 271 billion rupees ($3.56 billion) in the current financial year beginning April. That rise will not now go ahead.
Reuters quoted a finance ministry official as saying: "The total savings could be more than 700 billion rupees ($9.19bn) from an 18-month freeze."
Yeah, we will not be given any raise due to inflation, I calculated, I am loosing around 64000 in 18(around 3.5 k per month) month in form of DA
But everybody will get fully paid salaries and their yearly increments.
Sir did you manage to reunite with your family?
No, but my wife bleeding has stopped for now, so a good news for me
India's lockdown has been a joke. There was no proper planning on essential goods and services, food for the needy, no rapid tests. We have simply wasted 30-40 days and now have no choice but to open up the country. The clown show continues.
True.India's lockdown has been a joke. There was no proper planning on essential goods and services, food for the needy, no rapid tests. We have simply wasted 30-40 days and now have no choice but to open up the country. The clown show continues.
A woman was allegedly gang-raped in a school in India where she had been quarantined for a night by the police.
The incident was said to have happened in the desert state of Rajasthan last week after the woman sought shelter at a police station.
She became lost on her way home to her village from work and had walked alone for miles before being housed in a school building for the night by police. Local men are believed to have then raped the victim, who is in her 40s.
Parth Sharma, a deputy superintendent in the Sawai Mahopur district, told Reuters: “Three local men who raped the woman inside the school on 23 April have been arrested and sent to jail.”
Sharma said the woman had been sent to a local quarantine facility to be tested for Covid-19, but her test results were not yet known.
A nationwide lockdown was put in place by prime minister Narendra Modi last month to contain the spread of the virus, prompting thousands of workers who lost their jobs in cities to walk for days to reach their homes in rural India.
Many are now in overcrowded quarantine centres as new cases of the virus continue to surge in the country.
Source Guardian.
Matterhorn mountain in Switzerland lit up with Indian tri color.
https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/cor...-india-tricolour-amid-covid19-darknes-2213984
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">The world is fighting COVID-19 together. <br><br>Humanity will surely overcome this pandemic. <a href="https://t.co/7Kgwp1TU6A">https://t.co/7Kgwp1TU6A</a></p>— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) <a href="https://twitter.com/narendramodi/status/1251391771365556225?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 18, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
The global media reports are a mixture of relief and bafflement.
They talk about the "mystery behind India's lower death rates" from the Covid-19 infection, and say that India is "bucking the coronavirus trend". One talks about the "Indian exception as death rates in major Indian cities are lower compared to global coronavirus hotspots".
Nearly two months after its first recorded case, Covid-19 infections in the world's second most populous country have passed 27,000, with more than 800 deaths.
One way to understand the death rate is to track how many days it takes for total deaths to double.
In India, this is currently at nine days - there were 825 confirmed deaths on 25 April; compared to about half or so of that number on 16 April.
Experts say that's good news. The doubling time for deaths in New York at the same stage of the pandemic was only two or three days, they say.
Many public health professionals and doctors say India's grinding lockdown, which lasted more than a month, could have kept infection and deaths in check.
The medical journal Lancet says the "lockdown is already having the desired effect of flattening the epidemic curve".
Others believe that India's predominantly young population is helping keep fatalities low - elderly people have an elevated risk of death from the infection.
Yet others talk about the possibilities of the presence of a less virulent strain of the virus in India, along with the possibility that its hot weather was diminishing the contagion. Both these claims are not backed by any evidence. In fact, doctors treating critical Covid-19 patients have told me that the contagion is as virulent here as has been reported elsewhere in the world.
So is India an outlier when it comes to novel coronavirus fatalities?
"To be totally frank, I don't know and the world doesn't know the answer," Indian-American physician and oncologist Siddhartha Mukherjee told journalist Barkha Dutt recently. "It's a mystery, I'd say and part of the mystery is we are not doing enough testing. If we tested more then we'd know the answer."
He is alluding to both diagnostic tests which determine those who are currently infected and antibody tests to find out whether someone was previously infected and recovered.
The other question is whether India is "missing" Covid-19 deaths.
Most affected countries have inadvertently under-reported deaths. Studying mortality data in 12 countries, The New York Times found that in March at least 40,000 more people died during the coronavirus pandemic than the official death counts. These include deaths from the contagion as well as those from other likely causes.
And a Financial Times analysis of overall fatalities during the pandemic in 14 countries found that the death toll from coronavirus may be almost 60% higher than reported in official counts. None of the two studies feature India.
Prabhat Jha of the University of Toronto, who led India's ambitious Million Death Study, believes that to "do this right, missing deaths have to be considered".
"Since most deaths occur at home - and will be for the foreseeable future - in India, other systems are needed," Dr Jha told me.
Around 80% of deaths in India still happen at home. This includes deaths from infections like malaria and pneumonia. Maternal deaths, and deaths from sudden coronary attacks and accidents are more often reported from hospitals. "A lot of people get some medical attention over time, return and die at home in India," says Dr Jha.
Clearly, counting hospital deaths alone is not going to be sufficient enough to get an accurate number of Covid-19 fatalities.
Trying to get a count from funerals at crematoria and burial grounds would be equally tricky. Many of India's dead are cremated in the open in large swathes of the countryside. Funeral services cater only to a small sliver of the population.
At the same, there are no reports yet of a massive surge in hospital deaths, which would surely have not gone unnoticed, K Srinath Reddy, president of the Public Health Foundation of India, told me. (For example, a sharp rise in deaths of children in single hospitals in northern India in recent years has been faithfully reported.)
Similarly, Prof Reddy believes a sharp spike in home deaths over a long period is also not likely to go unnoticed.
In the absence of a robust public health surveillance system, experts say mobile phones could be used to find out whether there was an unusual surge in influenza-related deaths which could be linked to Covid-19.
More than 850 million Indians use mobile phones and they could be persuaded to report any unusual death in their villages on a toll-free number. Authorities could then follow up the deaths by visiting the families and conducting "verbal autopsies".
Counting deaths has always been an inexact science in India.
Some 10 million people die in India every year. The Million Death Study found that some deaths were overestimated (India had only 100,000 premature HIV deaths in 2005, about a quarter of the total estimated by WHO) and some were underestimated (five times as many malaria deaths as the WHO had estimated.) Also, according to the government's own admission, only 22% of deaths in India are medically certified.
Then there's the question of how to define a Covid-19 death.
Some Indian doctors have reported that many people were dying of Covid-19 symptoms without getting tested or "treated". Then there's the question of wrong diagnosis in a country where doctors often misdiagnose the cause of death.
Jean-Louis Vincent, a professor of Intensive Care Medicine at Belgium's Erasme University Hospital, told me there was under-reporting of Covid-19 deaths "in many countries, including India".
"When you are told the person had some fever and some respiratory problems before death, you may suspect Covid-19. But it may be something else," he said.
"Death is often preceded by an infection, sometimes minor. If you do not test, you may attribute many deaths to Covid-19 or deny its role altogether. That is why the mortality rates from 1918 Spanish flu varied so much."
Dr Vincent is not sure whether the death counts tell the whole story about the infection. "Recording the number of deaths due to Covid-19 is not very meaningful to evaluate the severity of the disease. The number of hospital admissions is somewhat better, but it does not include all deaths outside the hospital," he says.
It is also true, as experts say, that most governments are naturally concerned about reporting deaths to avoid scaring people.
"But nobody is trying to hide deaths intentionally. You can't hide mass deaths," says Dr Jha.
"Tracking deaths is far more reliable than cases, which are heavily affected by testing biases. But the key is to make sure all deaths or a good random sample or snapshot of deaths is captured."
India might be missing some deaths and not diagnosing every patient correctly for Covid-19. But the fatalities are unarguably low. Yet, it's too early to say that the country has bucked the trend. "Let's be frank," one expert told me. "We don't know yet."
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-52435463