As it spreads its insidious claws around the world, the deadly Wuhan Coronavirus has indiscriminately struck both the celebrities and the ordinary folks alike. It has affected Hollywood actor Tom Hanks, British Royal Prince of Wales, Bollywood singer Kanika Kapoor, British actor Idris Elba and a host of other celebrities. Now, Dr Ian Lipkin, renowned virologist and the medical adviser of the ominously prophetic movie ‘Contagion’ has also tested positive for the Covid-19 that has brought the world to a screeching halt.
Lipkin, who advised director Steven Soderbergh on the prescient 2011 movie revealed his condition after discussing the coronavirus pandemic at Fox’s “Lou Dobbs Tonight” on Tuesday.
A few minutes into the show, Lipkin made the explosive revelation that he too is suffering from Covid-19. “I would like to say on this show tonight, this has become very personal to me, too. Because I have COVID as of yesterday. It’s miserable,” said Lipkin, the director of the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia University, adding, “If it can hit me, it can hit anybody. That’s the message I want to convey.”
Declining to provide the details from whom or where he may have contracted the disease, Lipkin said that it did not matter from where he might have acquired the disease as the virus is all over the United States.
Regarding the strategy that could best contain the spread of the virus, Lipkin said that he thinks isolation and confinement are the best tools that should be used to limit the transmission of the disease.
Lipkin also raised alarms with regards to American President Donald Trump’s declaration about the country relaxing its lockdown restrictions by Easter weekend, April 11. “We have no idea when this is going to be under control,” said Lipkin while calling for harmonizing of restrictions across the country. “Our borders between states and cities are porous, and unless we’re consistent, we’re not gonna get ahead of this thing,” he added.
In 2011, Lipkin had claimed that he was persuaded to work with Soderbergh as he felt the movie was a sincere effort to accurately represent the science along with educating and entertaining people. Some of the scenes in the movie ‘Contagion’ reflect Lipkin’s own real-world experiences when he was in Beijing assisting the World Health Organization and the Chinese Health Ministry during the SARS outbreak in 2003. He became ill and was quarantined when he had returned to the US.
E-commerce giant Walmart Inc’s Flipkart will resume delivery of food and essential services partially after getting a nod from the federal and state governments, while online grocery store Big Basket has started operating in ten cities, while they are in the process of getting approval of resume operations in nine other cities. Both the e-retail companies had to stop operations due to Nationwide Lockdown announced by PM Narendra Modi to combat the Wuhan Coronavirus pandemic.
Kalyan Krishnamurthy, CEO, Flipkart Group tweeted after receiving assurances on the safety of its delivery staff and a hassle-free supply chain by the government: “We are grateful for the clarification provided by the government and local state authorities on the functioning of e-commerce during the lockdown. We are resuming our grocery services today. India, we are committed to serving you at this time. Thank you for your trust”.
We are grateful for the clarification provided by the government and local state authorities on the functioning of e-commerce during the lockdown. We are resuming our grocery services today. India, we are committed to serving you at this time ? Thank you for your trust
Earlier in the day, Bengaluru-based Flipkart had temporarily suspended all shopping on its website and its mobile app early on Wednesday. Flipkart has marked all products as ‘Out Of Stock’ on the search option of its app and website.
“Your needs have always been our priority, and our promise is that we will be back to serve you, as soon as possible,” a message reads on the Flipkart’s website.
Online grocery store Big Basket has announced that they will be resuming services in some cities. The company’s operations had to be stopped due to lack of clarification over the nature of its business, as police were not allowing movement its personnel and vehicles, despite the Ministry Home Affairs exempting grocery stores from the lockdown. The company informed on Twitter today that it has been able to list its service as essential service in Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Bhopal, Coimbatore, Indore, Mumbai, Mysore, Noida, Surat and Vadodara, and have started operating in these cities. Although the company is booked for 4-5 days due to huge demand.
Dear Customer,
We’ve been working hard to ensure that we are able to serve you over the next few weeks. Here’s an update on the status of our operations, by city (as on the evening of 25th March.)
The company will not be operating in Ghaziabad, Gurgaon, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Kolkata, Lucknow, Nagpur, Patna and Vijaywada for next few days, as they are unable to get classified as essential services in those places, although they said that they are in the process of acquiring the classification, and hope to resume operations soon in these cities. Big Basket said that they are not operating in Chandigarh, Chennai, Delhi, Ludhiana, Pune and Vizag, and don’t know whether they will be able to start, as they have not been able to get the necessary help from authorities. The company said that they will not operate in Kochi due to operational issues.
Amidst the ongoing lockdown, people are now largely depending on the e-commerce sites to buy household goods, food and medicine, but delivery hazards and overbooking has led these sites facing difficulties in reaching out to its customers.
Amazon.com announced on Tuesday that it was limiting its services to the sale and delivery of essential products. On Wednesday, its Pantry grocery service was unavailable in several cities and orders for most other food or household items showed delivery dates stretching well beyond the first week of April.
Meanwhile, healthcare platform Medlife and Alibaba-backed online grocer BigBasket was among those that encountered delivery difficulties after the national lockdown.
We are working with the local authorities for the passes and permits that allow movement of personnel and vehicles,” BigBasket said in a statement.
The company also said it was booked for the next seven days in almost all the cities in which it operates.
Albinder Dhindsa, CEO of SoftBank-backed Grofers, said the online grocer had a backlog of about 400,000 orders owing to “hiccups in our operations” over the past few days.
The Coronavirus pandemic has effected people physically as well as mentally all across the globe. Prime Minister Modi announced a 21-day nation-wide lockdown on the 24th of March to halt the spread of the coronavirus outbreak. All the states are strictly complying with the lockdown orders.
In an address to the nation, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a full lockdown of India in a bid to control to spread of the deadly Wuhan Coronavirus. India has had a total of 606 Covid-19 positive cases till date with the Wuhan Coronavirus claiming 10 lives in India. Globally, the pandemic has claimed 19,760 lives with total positive cases reaching a massive 441,093. Now, the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) has decided that 1 crore party workers are going to provide meals to 5 poor people each (5 crore poor people) during the India-wide lockdown.
A meeting of BJP national office bearers chaired by party president J P Nadda took the decision to feed ensure 5 crore poor people are fed during the lockdown in India, and a mechanism will be put in place at the earliest in this regard, its national media head Anil Baluni said.
In the meeting, Nadda called upon the party leaders and workers to ensure that one crore of them feed five poor persons each.
The decision has been taken after reports emerged that during the lockdown which came into force from 12 AM of the intervening night between 24th and 25th March, several poor people of the country were going hungry.
In a video that had emerged, it was seen that thousands of homeless people had gathered at a shelter in Delhi where the government was providing food. Unfortunately, the shelters did not have adequate ration or shelter, as reported.
THOUSANDS have collected at shelter homes where Delhi govt has directed cooked food be provided. Overcrowded, overwhelmed- shelters don’t have adequate ration & infrastructure. Govt needs to ensure cooked food distribution at all anganwadis & govt schools also #21daylockdownpic.twitter.com/R0jUM6TreX
It was also reported that several migrant workers were not being able to go back to their native places and hence were unable to meet their daily requirements, especially, with their means of earning being largely hit due to the Wuhan Coronavirus and the subsequent lockdown announced by various state level governments and then eventually, by the central government.
It is being reported that JP Nadda will be chairing several meetings with party workers during the 21-day lockdown period to ensure that this drive of providing meals to the poor is continued successfully.
The exercise of the National Population Register and the first phase of census 2021 has been postponed due to the three-week lockdown announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi amid grave health crisis caused by Wuhan Coronavirus in the country, Home Ministry officials said on Wednesday. The National Population register exercises are normally carried out from April 1 to September 30.
The Home Ministry stated that census 2021 was to be scheduled to be conducted in two phases–house listing and housing census during April-September and population enumeration from February 9 to 28. Due to the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic, a high alert has been declared by the center as well as the states and union territories. The update of NPR was also supposed to be done beside the phase I of census 2021 in all the states and union territories, except the state of Assam.
The first phase of Census 2021 and updating of NPR, which was supposed to begin on the dates decided by the states and the union territory governments including various related field activities are postponed until further order, said the statement of Home Ministry.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a 21-day lockdown across the country from Tuesday night due to the epidemic of the COVID-19 novel coronavirus that has infected nearly 600 people in the country and has claimed 11 lives so far. Officials asserted that the Census and NPR exercise requires the enumerators to visit every household and meet people, such kind of exercise is not possible to carry out due to the prevailing situation. That’s why it has been postponed by the government.
Certain states like Kerala, West Bengal, Punjab, Rajasthan, Chattisgarh, and Bihar are constantly opposing the National Population Register and some of them even adopted a resolution against NPR.
The objective of the NPR is to create a comprehensive database of every usual resident in the country.
In the wake of the growing number of coronavirus cases in the country, PM Modi yesterday announced a complete lockdown of India for 21 days to blunt the spread of the contagion that has so far affected hundreds. With lockdown in place, everyone is expected to stay at their homes and exercise strict social distancing to arrest the ominous spread of the disease. However, this luxury is not extended to police officials who are putting their lives on the line to ensure law and order is maintained in the country and the spread of the contagion is contained.
While most of the people remain homebound abiding by the lockdown restrictions, police officials have to venture out and discharge their duty so as to ensure the lockdown is followed in letter and spirit. This has left the family of police officials in great anxiety and distress owing to the highly contagious nature of the coronavirus.
A heartrending video of a bawling toddler trying to cling to his policeman father as he leaves for work. In the video, the child inconsolably wails as his father readies himself to leave the house for his police duty. The child tries to dissuade his father from going out saying “There is Corona outside”.
“Father, there is corona outside. There is corona outside,” the child laments. His father then tries to console him saying, “I am only going to be out for 2 minutes”. The video which is approximately half a minute long shows the child desperately begging his father to not leave the house.
The video poignantly highlights the emotional hardships faced and sacrifices made by police officials for the greater good of the society despite the palpable threat of the novel coronavirus to their lives. Similarly, doctors, nurses, healthcare workers, bankers and all others involved in indispensable services are too fighting on the frontline against the coronavirus to contain its spread and minimise the disruption caused by the pandemic.
Earlier in the day, armed terrorists and suicide bombers attacked a Gurudwara in Shor Bazar area in Kabul, Afghanistan, leaving 27 dead and at least 15 injured. According to the latest reports, the Islamic State (ISIS) has now claimed the responsibility for the attack.
Sources said that while one suicide bomber detonated himself at the entrance, three ISIS terrorists stormed the shrine in the Shorbazar area Wednesday morning (25 March). Around 150 people were worshipping in the Gurudwara at the time of the attack.
The Afghan security forces rescued around 80 worshippers from the Gurudwara and killed all three terrorists in a day-long gun-battle after which NATO soldiers helped with the clearance operation.
India strongly condemned the terror attack. In an official statement, the government said, “India stands ready to extend all possible assistance to the affected families of the Hindu and Sikh community of Afghanistan.”
“Such cowardly attacks on the places of religious worship of the minority community, especially at this time of COVID-19 pandemic, is reflective of the diabolical mindset of the perpetrators and their backers.
“We commend the brave Afghan security forces for their valourous response to the attack and their exemplary courage and dedication to protecting the Afghan people and secure the country. India stands in solidarity with the people, the government and the security forces of Afghanistan in their efforts for bringing peace and security to the country.”
The Shor Bazar area of Kabul was once home to several gurdwaras but they were destroyed during the fighting in the 1980s. Kabul is still home to several thousand Hindus and Sikhs, who because of being the minority community in Afghanistan, have been facing severe discrimination. This has forced many Hindus and Sikhs living in the area to migrate to other countries.
Last year too, ISIS had claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing occurred in August 2019 at a wedding hall in western Kabul, killing at least 63 people and injuring 182 people.
The Coronavirus pandemic has effected people physically as well as mentally all across the globe. While India battles the deadly virus head-on by putting the entire country under 21-day lockdown, some positive effects of minimal human interference could already be felt in many parts of the country, especially Delhi, during the earlier one-day ‘Janta Curfew’ lockdown on Sunday.
In India, several cities otherwise known to record high pollution levels have recorded an improvement in air quality on March 22 (Sunday). Delhi especially, which tops the world in air pollution, recorded the average AQI between March 13 and 22 as 161.4 compared to 190.5 last year. Data from SAFAR suggested that the overall AQI score of Delhi on March 25 stood at a satisfactory level. This year Delhi has had only moderate air quality days during the period but last year there were 4 poor air days.
According to SAFAR (System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting and Research), AQI between the range of 51 and 100 is considered as ‘satisfactory’ or ‘very good‘, 101-200 is ‘moderate‘, 201-300 falls under the category of ‘poor‘. While 300-400 is considered as ‘very poor‘, levels between 401-500 fall under the ‘hazardous‘ category. Delhiites have survived hazardous and very poor category many times in the recent past when pollution hit the city too hard.
It is believed that strict travel restrictions and shutting down of all the non-essential services have brought an enormous decline in the levels of nitrogen oxide, a pollutant emitted generally by motor vehicles, in the city.
Netizens couldn’t stop talking about this development as it is very rare when we see Delhi’s air in the satisfactory range.
China, which is being held responsible for the Wuhan Coronavirus outbreak throughout the world is reportedly not allowing the global issue to be discussed in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). Many countries want to pass a proposal on the global issue but China is constantly putting obstructions.
While Coronavirus has already claimed thousands of human life across the world, the United Nations have been failing in discussing the epidemic yet because of veto by China. The pandemic that broke out in Wuhan province of China has infected more than 4.3 lakh people around the globe. But the intergovernmental body United nations hasn’t started discussions over this serious problem. Neither the United Nations General Assembly of 193 members, nor the 15 member UN Security Council has discussed the matter yet.
Why hasn’t @UN taken up a discussion on #Coronavirus?Because the UNSC Chair for March is China.The monthly Chair decides the agenda. @ChinaAmbUN says,”there’s no reason to panic at the moment & plan to monitor the situation..COVID-19 currently not on the agenda” @sidhant@WIONews
When Chinese Ambassador Zhang Jun was asked questions related to the discussion on COVID-19, he said that it is not on the agenda of the United Nations Security Council. The United Nations Security Council is alleged to be divided on its proposal on the pandemic. China has also objections regarding the terminology of the proposal.
According to reports, China and some other countries are blocking a draft to discuss the pandemic at the UNSC. The draft proposal prepared by Estonia highlights “growing concern about the unprecedented extent of the COVID-19 outbreak in the world, which may constitute a threat to international peace and security.” The draft also calls for “full transparency” over the outbreak, which clearly refers to growing criticism that China is hiding vital details about origin about the Virus, making China uncomfortable over the terminology of the draft. None other US president Donald Trump has been alleging that China is misleading the world on the issue. Non-permanent member South Africa opposed the draft first, and later China and Russia also blocked it, reports say.
Another important aspect here is that China is the President of the UN Security Council for March. The President decides what issues will be discussed in the UNSC. Although the term of President changes every month, as a permanent member China has veto power so it can continue to block the issue to be taken up by UNSC.
The workings of the United Nations, headquartered at New York, has also virtually come to a halt, as the city is worst hit by Wuhan Coronavirus in the US. The meetings of the United Nations are also being conducted through video conferencing.
The G20 countries will be discussing the epidemic on Thursday with a common strategy. After the meeting of SAARC countries through video conferencing, Prime Minister Modi has also suggested the video conference meeting for G20 countries.
Prime Minister Modi announced a 21-day nation-wide lockdown on the 24th of March to halt the spread of the coronavirus outbreak. All the states are strictly complying with the lockdown orders. Police in all states have been asked to be strict with the curfew violators.
Amidst all this, a video has surfaced from the streets of Kolkata in West Bengal where a young girl is seen yelling and abusing a policeman as he tries to prevent cars from plying on the road during the lockdown.
A Twitter user named ‘Mikku’ going by the handle @effucktivehumor had shared a video where a couple of policemen are seen standing on the road intercepting cars passing by, flouting the lockdown orders. Suddenly a girl comes charging at a policeman and spits on his shirt. She yells at him, claiming that she is unwell, and she needs to go to fetch some medicines.
The policeman, initially in a gentle tone tries to explain to her that he wasn’t even talking to her and that he was only questioning the driver of the car. The girl, however, refuses to listen to the cop and raises her voice at him. She addresses the policeman disrespectfully, which, in turn, compels the cop to raise his voice at her. He, in a stern voice, asks her to go back, pointing his finger at her. This further agitates the girl who shouts and tells the cop not to raise fingers at her. “Ungli mat dikhana”, (don’t point fingers at me), said the girl in a high pitched tone.
Here, another boy intervenes and asks the girl to keep calm. He says: “tum patient ho na tum gaadi mein baitho” (aren’t you the patient? sit in the car), but the girl refuses to budge.
Throughout the conversation, the girl keeps referring to the cop as ‘tu’. (While ‘Aap’ in the Hindi language is a more formal word for ‘you’, generally used for elders or strangers, ‘tu’ is a very informal term, often considered derogatory if used for elders or strangers.)
In the video, at so many occasions, the policeman is heard asking the girl to go back, but the girl does not listen. She continues to yell and abuse the cop. She tells him that he does not deserve to wear the police uniform… in turn, the cop tells her that she doesn’t deserve to be a citizen of the country. The bickering continues, until a man intervenes and yells at the girl and asks her to leave.
In the video, other people are seen trying to pacify the girl, saying that the cop is merely performing his duty for the public safety, but the girl refuses to stop and continues the verbal abuse.
India has been put under a 21-day lockdown amidst the coronavirus outbreak. PM Modi in his address yesterday requested every citizen of the country with folded hands to stay where they are. The Prime Minister said that according to health experts, 21 days are essential to break the cycle of transmission of the Coronavirus.
Narendra Modi said that a ‘Lakshman Rekha’ has been drawn at their doorstep and everyone should stay at home for the duration of the lockdown.
So India is officially on lockdown in an attempt to arrest the spread of Wuhan Coronavirus. Twenty one days. For what it’s worth, India was already locking down anyway. The Indian Railways had come to a halt. All international flights had been stopped. A day later, all domestic flights were stopped. Inter-state travel was banned. Then, the lockdown was announced in 75 districts. A day before the PM’s announcement, Maharashtra had gone into a complete curfew already.
The Prime Minister has now formalized what was happening. As far as the economic cost goes, the 75 districts locked down the previous day would represent most of the GDP of the country anyway. After all, one interesting feature of the Wuhan Corona virus pandemic is that it is going from the “rich” to the “poor.”
Will the lockdown really be worth it? Honestly, this is impossible to answer. What we do know is that the rate of infection and the death tolls in Western countries were frankly terrifying.
Yesterday, 150 people died in the US. Almost 250 people dead in France. So bad is the situation that the tragedy in places like US and France isn’t even being reported a whole lot. The headlines belong to Italy and Spain, were 600-700 people are dying daily. This may not even be the full death toll. The Spanish Army, now out on the streets, is finding bodies of old people who had been left around to die.
Article from Independent
The worst in humanity has begun to surface. The fear of imminent death is looming and people are doing savage things. In India, we hear that landlords are beginning to turn doctors away from renting homes! There was the video of the poor Indigo employee whose family is being ostracized by her neighborhood. In panic like this, the animal instinct is now baring itself.
In India, while we have seen few deaths so far, the number of infections is beginning to climb at a scary pace. Ten days ago, we would see 10-20 infections a day. Within no time, it rose to 30-50 a day. Now, we are lucky if we can keep it under 100 infections a day. What if this exploded to 1000 a day? Or 10,000 a day? The US is now reporting several thousand cases a day. The same could happen in India.
Luckily, the death toll has stayed very much under control so far. But who knows for how long? After seeing the way the number of infections began increasing, do we really have the appetite to run the experiment and find out?
One thing that we can say for certain is this : Every country which tried to take it easy and thought the crisis would blow over, has paid a terrible price.
Here is the President of France on March 9.
Article from Euronews
And here is the President of France on March 16.
Article from BBC
Well, that escalated quickly.
The British initially said they had a plan. They wanted to go on with their lives, as usual, chasing something called ‘herd immunity.’ This is where they are now.
Article from CNN
In the United States, President Trump initially compared the Wuhan Corona virus to the flu, which kills 37000 Americans every year. But he appears to have changed his mind again.
One thing seems clear. The virus does not spare anyone. It does not care about anyone. If we under-react, the virus could extract a terrible toll. It seems everybody eventually comes around and undertakes extreme measures. The only question is when.
India has gone into lockdown with only 500 or so cases. That makes us one of the nations earliest on the curve, to implement extreme measures. But waiting another week could have been catastrophic.
Of course, the lockdown brought out the usual caravan of Modi haters and their narrow-minded taunts, now all over social media. Why isn’t everything better planned? Why couldn’t India have tested all 1.3 billion people already? Did you hear that Iceland has tested its entire population, all ten of them? Well, maybe not, but you get the picture anyway. And now that 1.3 billion people are under lockdown, where is the plan for doorstep delivery of supplies to hundreds of millions of households.
There are two possible explanations for this. Maybe they are our sincerest well-wishers. Maybe they have sky high expectations from India, now expected to succeed at something where all of Europe and the United States have failed miserably.
Or maybe they are just impatient to see India fail and by extension, Modi. There has been a real thirst and a real curiosity in the West about India. For Indian liberals and their sponsors in the West, it seems catastrophe in India can’t come soon enough. With the lockdown, there is now genuine fear in these liberal circles that India won’t hit the per day 1000+ death toll they have been promising their editors in the West. For backup, they search for opportunity in the terrible economic toll that this lockdown will take. Either way, the more the misery of India, the more they make merry.
We really are on our own here. It does look like nobody wants us to succeed. Which is a disheartening thought, considering that Indian people have never wished harm upon any other nation. But India’s growing might has opened up deep seated insecurities and prejudices both about skin color and non-Abrahamic faiths.
The good news is that our fate is in our own hands now. If the lockdown succeeds, we will make history. Let’s make it happen.
