It’s Tuesday, April 14th.
As India wraps up the first phase of its lockdown, a note on the newsletter. After covering this lockdown (and global news) in detail, I have decided to modify the duration of the digest from daily news to thrice in a week. This will allow me to provide news updates, but also focus on larger trends and recommend reads (without overloading you with information!). You will now receive the digest every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday.
News
Globally, cases near 2 million. Meanwhile, India’s infections are inching towards 11,000.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi today extended India’s nationwide lockdown till May 3rd. He also noted that all sub-regions and districts in each state will be monitored for outbreaks, and restrictions may be relaxed in areas without any cases depending on the context by April 20th. The Indian government’s hope is to be able to balance virus containment with reducing the economic losses.
In the BBC, Soutik Biswas had outlined why the next few weeks are critical for India and how with its dense and diverse population, different states will have different infection growth rates, adding to the challenge of containment. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-52265061
As many as 1,000 migrant laborers gathered at Mumbai’s Bandra West railway station today, as they hoped the lockdown would end and they would be able to travel to their hometowns. Millions of daily wage earners are struggling in the lockdown without adequate food. The crowd was dispersed by the police. Maharashtra is India’s worst affected state at the moment.
Barclays has put out the economic loss to India during the lockdown will be $234.4 billion, and has estimated that India’s GDP growth rate will be 0% in 2020.
Tensions continue between US states and President Trump on the coronavirus response. Trump has insisted that he has the sole authority to decide on reopening businesses, which the NYT reports was widely disputed by constitutional scholars.
Recommended Reads
Even for recovered COVID-19 patients, physicians are finding long term effects, including impaired liver function, heart failure, and severe damage to other organs.
What are long term coronavirus effects?, LA Times
The West coast states have more ventilators than they need. Now they’ve sent extra ventilators to New York. An interesting report on inter-state cooperation in the US and how it could’ve been done much earlier.
The East Coast, Always in the Spotlight, Owes a Debt to the West, Adam Nagourney and Jonathan Martin.
Rukmini Callimachi of The New York Times documents a COVID-19 nasal swab’s journey from test to results.
The pandemic and its economic effects will take a toll on the next generation of job-seekers, who are in college or graduating soon, writes Amanda Mull in The Atlantic.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, has been advising American presidents on infectious diseases from Reagan to Trump. “At seventy-nine, Fauci has run the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for thirty-six years, through six Administrations and a long procession of viral epidemics: H.I.V., sars, avian influenza, swine flu, Zika, and Ebola among them.” Here’s a profile of him in the New Yorker.
How Anthony Fauci Became America's Doctor, Michael Specter
Sesame Street is back, through Zoom. It took days to shoot an episode via video conferencing.
As if the world wasn’t already going to hell in a handbasket, just what we needed: massive wildfires are raging in the Chernobyl exclusion zone in Ukraine stirring up radiation levels in the area. The fires are inching closer to the nuclear power plant. Hundreds of firefighters are urgently trying to extinguish the fires.
Great