"Threats is an understatement.The level of expectation and aggression is really unprecedented. It’s overwhelming," Poonawalla said in an interview in The Times.
April 30, 2021
As India’s Covid-19 crisis becomes insurmountable, the Narendra Modi government has been widely criticised for trying to filter what the world hears about the worst pandemic outbreak anywhere on the planet.
In the last week, the government has sent notices to Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram to take down around 100 posts and block several accounts that were discussing the pandemic and its management. On April 23, at the behest of the Indian government, Twitter blocked over 50 tweets from politicians, filmmakers, and others criticising the mishandling of the pandemic.
Earlier this week, the #ResignModi hashtag was blocked on Facebook for hours. The social media platform later restored it and said it was a “mistake” and “not because the Indian government asked us to.” Facebook’s policy communications director Andy Stone did not reply to Quartz’s query on whether this error was caused by an algorithm or a human.
April 30, 2021
If trends in other countries are anything to go by, India’s Covid-19 nightmare might continue for more than a month.
The second wave of coronavirus is likely to peak only in June, according to research by Hong Kong-based brokerage firm CLSA. The prediction is based on an analysis of 12 countries including the US, Brazil, and the UK which faced a strong resurgence of Covid-19. CLSA found that the second waves in these countries peaked when incremental cases had hit the median of 2% of the population.
“India may take nearly two months to get to incremental infections equal to 2% of its population, from 0.5% currently, during the second wave. Maharashtra is currently at 1.8% and should get to this level in less than a week,” the brokerage estimates.
At a time when Indians are fighting to save their loved ones amid a scarcity of hospital beds, medicines, oxygen, and other essential medical supplies, scamsters are working overtime to leverage the desperate situation.
India’s hapless situation has US senators urging the American government to act.
On April 27, co-chairs of the Senate India Caucus John Cornyn and Mark Warner, asked US president Joe Biden to offer a lending hand to countries that have been badly hit by the Covid-19 pandemic. Calling the situation in India “alarming,” in their letter to Biden (pdf), the duo said, “US government agencies both civilian and military should be mobilized to lead an international response to the pandemic.”
On April 28, India saw 379,000 new cases of Covid-19, even as citizens struggled to access basic healthcare resources such as medicines and oxygen.