Covid Watch: Do not say the word

The Hindu Newsletter - Covid Watch: Do not say the word Monday 30, March 2020 [alt_text]( The Evening Wrap Welcome to the Evening Wrap newsletter, your guide to the day’s biggest stories with concise analysis from The Hindu. We hope you are staying home and staying safe. Here are the big stories that you need to follow today: Covid Watch - Don’t say the word As India approaches a full week of the national lockdown, the number of reported cases continues to rise steadily. India has reported 37 deaths so far and the case count has crossed 1,200. Six more deaths were reported today. 100 COVID-19 patients have fully recovered and have been discharged. The Union Health Ministry today said that the term ‘community transmission’ should not be used, insisting that India was still experiencing only “local transmission” of the disease. It has taken 12 days for India to reach 1,000 cases, an official said, while several nations have seen up to 8,000 cases in this time period. “We have been able to achieve this because of the cooperation of the public, our collective pre-emptive action, social distancing, and lockdown,” added the official. Our data team, in an excellent analysis, has argued that even with the lockdown in place, [more testing needs to be done]( if India is to curb the coronavirus spread. We suspect this is a line we are going to hear more often in the coming days. Unless we test expansively, we won’t have an idea of the true number of cases, rendering the question of local or community transmission moot. Meanwhile, the government has said there was [no plan to extend the 21-day lockdown](. The Press Information Bureau (PIB) of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting tweeted, saying Cabinet Secretary Rajiv Gauba has denied media reports of the government planning to extend the lockdown. Toxic Treatment The administration in Bareilly, Uttar Pradesh, sprayed migrant labourers with [a hazardous disinfectant]( before allowing them entry into the district. Our correspondent reports that a group of migrants, including women, were seen squatting on the road near a checkpoint in Bareilly as officials in full protection gear hosed them with a chemical solution. The migrants were not only clothed but also had their luggage strapped to their bodies as they got drenched. A medical officer in the district said that a sodium hypochlorite solution -- commonly used as a disinfectant -- was sprayed on the migrants. “It does not have such hazards...that's why it was used,” he said. The chief fire officer of the district has, however, admitted that it is extremely harmful to spray this chemical on humans. The Health Ministry put the action down to an “overzealous employee”. PM-CARES: A Controversy On March 28, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the launch of Prime Minister’s Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations Fund (PM-CARES), a charitable trust and “a dedicated national fund with the primary objective of dealing with any kind of emergency or distress situation, like posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, and to provide relief to the affected”. The PM is the chairman of this trust, and its members include the defense minister, home minister and the finance minister. With the PM putting out tweets calling for donations, quite a few corporate houses announced their contributions. Congress MP Shahi Tharoor, however, had a question for the PM. When we already have a Prime Minister’s National Relief Fund (PM-NRF), why set up another parallel fund of the same kind? That too when there are still substantial funds lying unutilised in PM-NRF? “Why not simply rename PMNRF as PM-CARES, given the PM's penchant for catchy acronyms, instead of creating a separate Public Charitable Trust whose rules & expenditure are totally opaque? [@PMOIndia]( you owe the country an explanation for this highly unusual step”, tweeted Tharoor. A year away The Tokyo Olympics will open next year in the same time slot scheduled for this year’s games. Tokyo organisers said the opening ceremony will take place on July 23, 2021 — almost exactly one year after the games were due to start this year. Last week, the [IOC and Japanese organisers had postponed the Olympics until 2021Â](because of the coronavirus pandemic. This year’s games were scheduled to open on July 24 and close on August 9. But the near exact one-year delay will see the rescheduled closing ceremony on August 8. Auto response Automobile manufacturers have been asked to manufacture ventilators, and they are working towards this end, confirmed the Union Health Ministry on Monday. Part of measures being taken in anticipation of a surge in COVID-19 cases, this is in addition to the order given to Bharat Electronics Ltd. to manufacture 30,000 ventilators in the next two months in collaboration with local manufacturers. An Indian firm, Agav Healthcare, Noida, has been given an order to manufacture 10,000 ventilators within a month. Their supplies are expected to commence in the second week of April. Migrant workers plea The Supreme Court on Monday sought a report from the government on steps taken regarding the [largescale inter-State movement of migrant workers]( during the 21-day national lockdown. A Bench of Chief Justice S.A. Bobde and L. Nageswara Rao heard, via videoconferencing, the petitions filed separately by advocates Alakh Alok Srivastava and Rashmi Bansal seeking directions to the government to immediately redress the “heart-wrenching and inhuman plight of thousands of migrant workers” who are [walking back to their native villages]( from the cities, without basic essentials. In Brief: Around 200 people were taken from the Nizamuddin area in New Delhi to various hospitals by district authorities after they developed [coronavirus symptoms](, said a police officer on Monday. Britain’s Prince Charles came out of self-isolation on Monday, [seven days after it was confirmed that he had tested positive for coronavirus](, a royal spokesperson said. That’s it for this edition of The Evening Wrap. We’ll see you tomorrow. 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