India recorded 3,29,942 fresh Covid-19 cases in the last 24 hours ending 8 am Tuesday. The country’s total infections stand at over 2.29 crore. Out of these, over 37.15 lakh cases are active while 1.90 crore people have recovered after testing positive. Active cases have declined for the first time in 2 months. With 3,876 new deaths, the toll is now at over 2.49 lakh.
As Covid-19 continues to spread across India, the number of vaccines administered to the adult population is falling at an alarming rate. The dip in doses is particularly acute in rural areas where the curve is rising and where there are glaring gaps in medical infrastructure. According to an analysis, as many as 37 surge districts across the country reported over 50 per cent drop in jabs.
In terms of fatalities, the worrying sign is the rapid uptick in deaths in smaller states like Jharkhand, Haryana, Chhattisgarh, Punjab and now Uttarakhand. Maharashtra continues to report the maximum number of deaths every day.
BJP President JP Nadda has expressed his anguish over Congress President Sonia Gandhi’s criticism of Centre’s handling of covid-19 crisis in the country. In a letter to Gandhi, Nadda said that India is fighting covid with “utmost courage” and that he wishes that Congress “ stops misleading people, creating false panic” amid these times. Nadda said that he was “pained” by the criticism and asked Gandhi to see if actions of Congress was “weakening the fight against Covid”
Meanwhile, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Monday said Delhi should prepare for the third wave of the virus and expressed confidence that given the scale at which the city is creating infrastructure, it will be able to handle even 30,000 cases each day.
Covid rumblings within: BJP leaders in UP complain as govt puts up a brave face
As Uttar Pradesh continues to battle the second wave of Covid-19, there are growing voices of unease within the state BJP, with a number of MLAs and MPs raising questions about the state government’s handling of the situation — from shortage of hospital beds to alleged lack of cooperation from authorities to deal with the hundreds of SOS calls from their constituencies.
Over the last few weeks, many of them have written to the Chief Minister with these complaints, prompting Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, who has himself only recently recovered from Covid-19, to start visiting hotspot districts in the state and review arrangements.
Vaccine inequity gets worse: rural India, smaller hospitals hit
The slide in the number of vaccine doses administered in the week starting May 1, after the government “opened up” vaccination beyond priority groups, to its lowest level in eight weeks hides a further skew — indication that the inoculation process could be turning more inequitable than earlier.
In a vaccine market that continues to see a demand-supply mismatch, the revised vaccine procurement process builds in a skew against smaller hospitals in cities and towns in comparison to their bigger counterparts in simply getting access to the shots, and a more disconcerting urban-rural divide in terms of where healthcare facilities are vis-à-vis the already-established supply-chain map.