Covid-19 Wrap-up: 594 doctors lost their lives in second wave, says IMA

Low pay, 24-hour shifts and severe shortages of staff and protective gear have left many doctors on the frontlines of India's brutal pandemic surge near breaking point and fearful for their lives. The Indian Medical Association revealed that 594 doctors had succumbed to Covid-19 during the second wave.

She was "completely destroyed" after she lost her mother and sister to Covid-19. Indian women's team cricketer Veda Krishnamurthy said she was slowly learning to tune herself out of that grief and stressed the importance of mental health assistance during crises.

The Supreme Court sought to know from the Centre its "thinking" behind the vaccination policy, saying it was prima facie arbitrary and irrational for making it initially free and then paid for people in the 18-44 age group.

The Delhi High Court said that if the Delhi government could not ensure that people get both doses of Covaxin within the stipulated time, then it should not have started so many vaccination centres with "much pomp and splendour".

India recorded 1.32 lakh new Covid-19 infections taking the nation's case tally past 2.83 crore while the daily positivity rate dropped to 6.57 per cent, according to Union Health Ministry data updated this morning. In the last 24 hours, 3,207 people succumbed to the disease.

Baba Ramdev has been dragged to court by a resident of a north Bihar town, who wants the yoga guru to be booked for sedition in the wake of his alleged disparaging remarks against modern medicine and its practitioners.

After testing positive for Covid-19 on April 21, Congress leader Shashi Tharoor was hospitalised and discharged. He tweeted a video today in which he said that he was still suffering from the complications of a long Covid-19 infection. He went on to push for free, universal vaccinations for the entire country.

To meet the Centre’s ambitious plan of vaccinating its entire adult population by the end of 2021, India will need to speed up its Covid-19 vaccination drive by a huge margin.

In Bengaluru, the vaccination site at the Bhuvaneshwari Nagar PHC was shifted to a new location, reportedly at the behest of the BJP’s CV Raman Nagar MLA S Raghu, drawing sharp criticism from all quarters.

The Pfizer and Moderna Covid-19 vaccines may soon be arriving in India as the government is likely to clear the pending indemnity clause that was causing delays in the emergency use nod. The country's apex drug regulator waived the requirement of testing every batch of foreign-made Covid-19 vaccines by the Central Drugs Laboratory, Kasauli, and post-launch bridging trials for such firms, a move that will bolster the availability of vaccines.

Israel's Health Ministry said it had found that a small number of heart inflammation cases were likely linked to vaccinations and were observed mainly in young men who had received Pfizer's Covid-19 vaccine. Moderna is gearing up to halve the dose of its Covid-19 vaccine so that it could be used to combat variants and inoculate children.

After multiple studies suggested that mixing Covid-19 vaccines was safe and effective, several countries began implementing this option due to an acute shortage of vaccines. India's Health Ministry, however, issued an advisory saying that mixing vaccines was not part of the protocol yet. Here's what we know so far.

A private hospital in Pune run by a charitable trust announced that it would administer a limited number of Covid-19 vaccines every day to "underprivileged" individuals for free. Proceeding from the normative commitment to the universal and fundamental right to life, reducing an essential life-saving service such as vaccination to an act of charity is deeply problematic on many levels.