Can we rely on natural herd immunity to end COVID-19 pandemic?
All previous influenza pandemics — 1918 Spanish flu, 1957 Asian flu, 1968 Hong Kong influenza, and 2009 H1N1 — came to an end when herd immunity acquired naturally reached a…
Category: Pandemic
Coronavirus: U.S. halting funding for WHO will have disastrous consequences
Faulting the WHO for imaginary failings cannot help Mr. Trump wash his hands of many administrative failures in containing the epidemic. Moving beyond blaming and actually withholding WHO funding can…
Coronavirus: Trump finds a scapegoat in WHO
After blaming coronavirus as democrats’ new hoax, and calling the microbe as “China virus”, WHO has now become Mr. Trump’s latest scapegoat for all the failures of his administration in…
War against coronavirus should not acquire a religious colour
The large religious congregation held in mid-March by Tablighi Jamaat Nizamuddin in Delhi has turned into a large cluster of novel coronavirus. The organisers should have been aware how their…
China reports zero cases on three days, is it just a blip?
China had zero cases on March 18-20, but one local transmission on March 21. The turnaround in China comes at a time when the virus is galloping in Europe and…
Epicentre of COVID-19 pandemic shifts to Europe
Besides Italy, Spain, Germany and France reporting very high number of cases, all other countries in Europe have recorded at least one case so far, thus shifting the epicentre of…
H1N1 is back with a vengence
So far this year, 12,500 people have been infected with the influenza A (H1N1) virus in India, of which 600 have died. According to official data, Maharashtra alone has registered…
New way to develop influenza A vaccine
Precious time lost in developing an effective vaccine against influenza A viruses that jump from animals to humans and spread across the world causing a pandemic is quite close to…
