1 Nov 2021
Samir Saran
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Comparisons, as the proverb goes, are odious. Hence comparing the raging outbreak of Covid19 with any other pandemic of recent times is best avoided. Yet, it is difficult to track the pandemonium unleashed by Covid19 without recalling how the SARS epidemic of 2002-03 had let loose fear, concern and death in a similar manner. Then,…
24 Sep 2021
Oommen C. Kurian
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There are four types of endemic human corona viruses in the world—229E, NL63, OC43, and HKU1—and people across countries commonly get infected with these. According to experts, SARS-CoV-2 virus is soon becoming the fifth endemic human coronavirus. Once the supply bottlenecks of COVID-19 vaccines are overcome, the SARS-CoV-2 virus is supposed to become yet another…
22 Sep 2021
Harini Calamur
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The Indian states, worried as they are about COVID-19 and the fatalities, need to take a calculated risk to reopen schools. While the risk to some students of contacting COVID-19 is high, the risk to the future of all students is even higher As the world locked down last year in the face of the…
4 May 2021
Vikas Kathuria & Arul Scaria
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It is clear by now that universal access to vaccines depends upon cheap prices, and high scale and speed of production. Even if governments subsidise prices to make the vaccines cheap or ideally free of cost, at present, there are not enough vaccines to administer the critical mass of the population in poor- and middle-income…
23 Jan 2021
Oommen C. Kurian
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The biggest vaccination campaign ever has also brought the focus on health inequalities at a global scale. As of 21st January, of the more than 55 million Covid-19 vaccine shots administered across the world, only 55 doses have gone to people of a low-income country. That country is Guinea, and they have secured these 55…
6 Jan 2021
Oommen C. Kurian
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Despair was the leitmotif of 2020. Even countries with acclaimed health systems have been through a nightmare that is yet to end. In this gloomy, dismal scenario, as the world enters 2021, the multiple COVID-19 vaccines that have secured regulatory approvals across the world and are being rolled out to much fanfare, offer a glimmer…
1 Oct 2020
Samir Saran and Alexis Crow
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As investors ponder the impact of the world’s greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression, emerging markets (EMs) face a swift reversal of fortune. Some of the fastest-growing economies in the world have been brought to a virtual standstill, reeling with the effects of an exogenous shock to demand, a public health emergency, and nascent…
7 Sep 2020
ORF
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Subrahmanyam Jaishankar analysis India’s financial and global challenges in his book The India Way The decade from the 2008 global financial crisis to the 2020 coronavirus pandemic has seen a real transformation of the world order. The very nature of international relations and its rules are changing before our eyes. For India, this means…
2 Sep 2020
Priti Patnaik
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Vaccines for COVID-19 are not yet a reality, but plans are afoot to enable trading in stocks of potential vaccines. Gavi says the plan will allow countries to exchange vaccines doses with each other, allowing each economy to optimise to their own needs. In order to get a firm commitment from rich countries to commit…
22 Aug 2020
Banjot Kaur
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The eight million residents of Mumbai’s Dharavi are not concerned about whether the ‘Dharavi model’ to tackle the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) was science or serendipity. They would rather leave that to the experts and media. The people of Dharavi are, instead, more concerned about issues such as job loss, unemployment, hunger and shortage of…