'Whenever you roll out: effectiveness is important, operational logistics are important, side effects are important and vaccine hesitancy is important.'
A month-long national lockdown to arrest the spread of COVID 2.0 could shave off 100-200 bps of GDP, leading to a 300 bps risk to annual growth, a brokerage report has flagged while expressing doubts over the ability of local lockdowns to control the pandemic. The second wave of the coronavirus inflection has caught the government off-guard with the daily cases jumping over 6.5 times in the past 30 days. With close to 3.53 lakh fresh daily infections, the country is the worst hit globally.
'When you need to revive the economy, when you need to revive aggregate demand, you cut taxes.' 'But what's this government doing?' 'It's increasing taxes for the middle class and the vast majority of the poor on fuel, which has a ratchet effect on most other products.'
'With the June quarter GDP shrinking by nearly a quarter, there is an even greater economic imperative: Reduction of uncertainty,' observes Neelkanth Mishra.
'We want Muslims to go about their work and business unhindered.' 'They should not get victimised and that will only come through the process of reconciliation.'
'Your constant reiteration on the lack of religious freedom in India has sown doubts about the kind of information that you are being fed and based on which you seem to be making adverse references to India and its tradition of religious tolerance.'
Without Myanmar, India can't engage with any of the Asian nations to its east.
Expressing concern over the COVID-19 situation, the chief minister urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to widen the vaccination ambit to cover those younger than 60 as the mutant has been found to be infecting young people more, an official statement quoting him said.
The Johnson and Johnson and Sputnik vaccines should be approved now, as should the Pfizer and Moderna ones, suggests Naushad Forbes. Leave it to the companies to figure out how to put in place the right chilling infrastructure. Don't let a lack of approvals deprive the country of availability, suggests Naushad Forbes.
Drug firm Zydus Cadila on Thursday said it has applied for emergency use authorisation (EUA) with the Indian drug regulator for its three-dose COVID-19 vaccine ZyCoV-D, and plans to manufacture 10-12 crore doses annually.
Indian Council of Medical Research Director General Balram Bhargava said the purpose of the COVID vaccine drive would be to break the chain of viral transmission.
'We are not talking pennies. The milk business is as large as the automobile industry (about Rs 4 trillion in sales),' points out T N Ninan.
'Almost 70 per cent production time of a vaccine is dedicated to quality control, which is done through several hundred tests.'
The first cycle starts with 1, then 2, then 4, 8, etc, until the infected population jumps to 16,384 at the 14th cycle, explains Devangshu Dutta.
A reception often reserved for rockstars came the way of mining mogul Anil Agarwal when he started revealing nuggets of his ascent from a scrap-metal dealer to one of India's most prominent self-made industrialists on social media. And now he has been flooded with booking writing proposals and has even been offered money for a biopic. In February this year, Agarwal, 68, started tweeting his journey from Bihar to Mumbai first and then to London to head a globally diversified natural resources company with interests in zinc-lead-silver, iron ore, steel, copper, aluminium, power, oil and gas.
The government has an opportunity right now to save Indians from deep recession, and in many cases, starvation, notes Kalyan Singhal.
'It is a terrible time, but yet there are enough examples of the goodness of people.'
'The Modi government's lack of foresight has compelled India to become an importer of vaccines today and even now, their "vaccine strategy is flawed and discriminatory'
'Aquaponics can effectively cushion the impact of a calamity like COVID.'
'In the second wave, probably due to the mutants, probably due to COVID-19-inappropriate behaviour, we are seeing it coming in the younger population, say from ages 30 to 50.' 'Also, we've seen that sometimes they deteriorate pretty rapidly and therefore we may need to keep a closer watch on the symptoms and on the oxygen levels at home.'
'Better hygiene practices could lower a person's immunity and make the person susceptible to auto-immune diseases.'
The global number of new cases has been increasing for more than a month, with over 4 million cases reported in the past week - July 26 to August 1, the update said.
India's COVID-19 fatality rate has dropped significantly to 2.43 per cent from 3.36 per cent on June 17 due to effective clinical management of coronavirus cases, the health ministry and asserted that the country has handled the pandemic 'relatively well'.
Making water available is always a serious challenge in the summer for all public authorities. This year, the challenge is higher when hand-washing at every opportunity has become a necessity. So keeping potable water lines running without a glitch has become most necessary.
India should observe October 22 as Kashmir Martyrs Day to pay tribute to those who lost their lives to Paakistan's State terrorism, suggests Brigadier Narender Kumar (retd).
Gilgit Baltistan's large frontage with Kashmir and Ladakh across Kargil and the Siachen Glacier gives Pakistan and China the perceived scope for conduct of collusive operations against India and wrest control of the major course of the Indus and Shyok, observes Lieutenant General Syed Ata Hasnain (retd).
'We were lucky, in many ways, that we got the disease late.'
'Even after vaccines are given, precautions like using a mask and maintaining social distancing have to be taken.'
"This is the third year in a row that India makes to top 10 in Doing Business, which is a success which very few countries have done over the 20 years of the project, Without exception, the other countries that have done this are very small, population-wise, and homogeneous," Simeon Djankov, Director of Development Economics at the World bank told PTI in an interview.
Easy availability of drones has increased the complexity of security challenges and the Indian military is developing capabilities to effectively deal with the threats, be it from State-sponsored elements or by states themselves, Army Chief Gen M M Naravane said on Thursday.
The country must get its act on global alliances right in order to feed its fuel-hungry economy, points out Subhomoy Bhattacharjee.
"As regards reports about a bridge being made by the Chinese side on Pangong Lake, the government has been monitoring this activity closely," External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said.
Kejriwal's centralised way of governance might work in Delhi, but Punjab will call for delegation, observes Sanjeev Nayyar.
Far from the metros and big cities, the coronavirus crisis in the country's districts, towns and villages is being led by district magistrates.
The responsibility of keeping the pandemic under control lies with the DM or collector.
Subrat Kumar Sen, the young district magistrate of Saran, north Bihar, tells Rediff.com's Archana Masih how he and his staff are combating a crisis that no one has confronted before.
The government is considering setting up air freight stations to enable direct movement of vaccines from pharmaceutical factories to the aircraft.
The magnitude of atrocities inflicted by the Pakistani establishment on the Baloch people is unimaginable, says Dr Abhay Jere.
The party is better at winning elections than at governance and it remains intent on pushing ahead with its trademark social and political agenda observes T N Ninan.
The Union government's role and the prices announced by the vaccine makers raises far too many disquieting questions, observes Prosenjit Datta.
It is hard to tell whether the prime minister is unable to confront the reality or so supremely confident in his abilities that he can convince the rest of us that the reality is different from our perception of it, observes Aakar Patel.
The study, which was conducted on more than 100 healthcare workers at three centres in India including Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, found that the B.1.617.2 Delta variant not only dominates vaccine-breakthrough infections with higher respiratory viral loads compared to non-Delta infections (Ct value of 16.5 versus 19) but also generates greater transmission among the fully vaccinated HCWs.
