COVID-19

Describing her lockdown experience in a basti (settlement) in Mumbai, 15-year-old Saniya’s rap song captures the isolation that has given the year 2020 the epithet of ‘The Year We Lost’. The suspension of daily rhythms, coupled with a warped sense of time and subsequent loneliness—despite being surrounded by millions of other people—is a feeling many resonate with, as cities around the world fell into a disquieting silence. Yet, even as India went into one of the strictest lockdowns in the world with barely four hours notice, this sensation was amplified for already vulnerable groups such as adolescent girls. As school gates were locked and public…

“They were numbers first. Numbers then changed to names. And names changed to people we loved”. The second wave of COVID-19 has hit us hard as many of us have lost loved ones as we struggle to contain the effects of the virus. It is also the worst kind of déjà vu from last year. While some of us will be able to stay home, a vast majority around us are struggling with little or no access to healthcare, shelter and food. Many have lost jobs.  Read more: BBMP budget: Is 336 cr enough to manage Covid, fix a broken…

Several civil society organisations and individuals on Thursday, called upon the Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa to act against four elected representatives of the Bharatiya Janata Party who, in the name of exposing a scam in BBMP's bed-allocation for COVID patients, had targeted Muslims working in the relief effort. The demanded that Bengaluru South Member of Parliament Tejasvi Surya, Basavanagudi MLA Ravi Subramanya, Chickpet MLA Uday Garudachar and Bommanahalli MLA Satish Reddy be made to apologise for their actions and compensate Rs 50,000 to each of the targeted 16 muslim employees of a private firm drafted by the BBMP in…

[Based on a conversation with Dr P V Karthik] In the fight against the current COVID tsunami that’s engulfing us, we, along with a group of amazing volunteers (most of them being young college students and young working professionals), have been trying to respond to SOS tweets and alerts coming in from various parts of the country. With the number of SOS cases increasing from Chennai, we assembled a dedicated team of volunteers to cater to region-specific requests.  Those who made calls to hospitals in the last 3-4 days will know how difficult it is to get a bed in…

Coronavirus is devastating and many families have lost multiple members due to the infection. We are seeing many young people losing lives. We have a recommendation for parents with young children. Please make a plan for your child/children if and when you fall sick. Identify family or friends in the community, or in the city, who will take care of them, even if your child is suspected to have COVID and needs care-taking. That means that the care-giver should not have elderly parents or co-morbidities which would not allow them to offer this support. Tough as it may be, do…

India is in the throes of the second wave of the COVID-19 outbreak. Cases are shooting up at alarming rates across the country every day. The crunch of medical resources on one hand, and the cost of treatment especially in critical cases on the other, have left citizens in dire straits. In these circumstances, health insurance and the extent of coverage received under existing policies assumes huge importance. Personal accounts are often not very encouraging. Jayalakshmi Krishnan from Chennai had opted for reimbursement when she was admitted to a private hospital for COVID treatment. "I was at the hospital's general…

Bengalureans have a multitude of COVID helplines, but how helpful are these? Those who have called the helplines for beds say it takes hours or even days to get a bed now. When it comes to follow-up for those in home isolation, some say they got calls on time, but some others say the calls came too late to be helpful. "There are simply no beds" Biju Mathews, a resident of Koramangala 3rd block, is part of a volunteer group that supports COVID patients. Last week, his group got requests for hospital beds from two critically-ill patients. Despite calling COVID…

A group of individuals and members of civil society organisations including Whitefield Rising, Bangalore Apartment Federation, and Sochara, have written to the Karnataka Chief Minister, BS Yediyurappa, highlighting major issues in COVID Management, with suggestions and asks for immediate steps. Here's the letter Dear Shri Yediyurappa, Bengaluru urban and rural is in an extremely serious state with a large number of COVID patients in need of medical resources, from hospital beds, to oxygen infrastructure to ICUs and ventilators. Volunteers and family members of patients are making desperate calls and sending messages to find sources to help those in need. We…

The devastation that we see around us today caused by the second wave of COVID-19 in the country, is not just because of the rates of contagion and the virulence of the disease, but also — and perhaps, more significantly — because of the crunch in life-saving resources. Especially something we have always taken for granted — Oxygen.  But why did the country run short of oxygen and have we been able to find solutions to tide over the shortage? Although oxygen is the element primarily responsible for sustaining life on planet Earth and constitutes 21% of the atmosphere, oxygen…

The issue of whether domestic help (house helpers, cooks, drivers etc.) be allowed to continue working in flats during the lockdown has become quite a contentious subject over the last few days. Many apartment residents are complaining that it is putting them to a lot of inconvenience. Some people have even approached the police to take action against managing committees of apartment associations that have restricted entry to domestic help. In this backdrop, my views on this contentious issue are as follows: Every passing day, I am seeing more people dying around me, including in apartment complexes. The inconvenience of…