Thursday begins with the Centre’s promise that lockdown curbs will be significantly reduced next week, allowing stranded migrant workers to go home.
In financial news, investors are pulling out Rs 9,000 crore of credit risk funds in the aftermath of the Franklin Templeton debacle.
It adds, “The Centre indicated a significant easing of curbs in ‘orange’ and ‘green’ areas post-May 3, with measures to increase economic activity and restore normal life.”
With the good news comes the bad for Delhi: “Samples pending for tests in city up 7 times in 1 mth”. The number of samples pending for tests has gone from 470 on April 1 to 3,295 as on April 29, says TOI. Officials say “this delay is causing serious problems in identifying positive cases, tracing their contacts…”
And, all central government employees on alert: “Aarogya Setu ‘OK’ must for central govt staffers”. TOI writes that all central government employees must immediately download Aarogya Setu App on their mobile phones and “confirm their status as ‘safe’ or ‘low-risk’ before setting off for their work place”.
The one positive fallout of the coronavirus is there for all to see in the photograph of the mountains — “SAHARANPUR WAKES UP TO HIMALAYAS” — for the first time in three decades the snow-capped peaks of Gangotri became visible from UP’s Saharanpur.
And here’s an unusual report from Russia on the lockdown — ‘Russia under lockdown, India’ manned space mission trainees confined indoors’— four officers of the Indian Air Force, who were selected to be trained for India’s first manned space flight, are currently sitting ducks in Moscow due to the lockdown, says the report.
In a new investigative series, Express observes how private healthcare is receding into the background of India’s Covid-19 fight. In “Covid fight: Govt system in front…’, it notes that private hospitals “account for two thirds of hospital beds in India, and almost 80 per cent of ventilators..[but] handling just 10 per cent” of 800 critical Covid-19 cases in India.
The paper criticises private hospitals for their absence —“Being sealed in early stages after their staff tested positive, refusing to admit patients” and “suspending services to playing safe”.
The hardest hit is the fruit and vegetable supply chain: At Azadpur market, the volume of arrivals dropped by “a third of the average daily arrivals over the past week”.
Talking about restrictions ‘Flights may begin at 30% capacity after lockdown’, reports HT. According to the daily, “…airports will facilitate limited domestic and international scheduled flights in phases and services may initially be capped at 30% capacity to facilitate social distancing, according to the Airport Authority of India’s guidelines for post-lockdown operations”.
In some non-Covid news, ‘BJP, Congress blame each other for protecting wilful defaulters’. HT reports, “Top leaders in the BJP camp contended that the central government did not waive loans of wilful defaulters, while the Congress stuck to its guns and alleged that the government’s handling of the issue benefited economic fugitives such as Vijay Mallya, Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksi.”
It says, India reported 70 Covid-19 deaths in the past 24 hours bringing the total death toll to 1,008 Wednesday and making it one of 17 countries that had over 1,000 deaths.
While rural distress is a huge worry, Hindu found ‘Only 30 lakh found NREGA work in April’.
This is the lowest in five years, and indicates “an 82% drop from the previous year’s figure of 1.7 crore workers’’, it writes. “Some states had zero workers as on April 29, showing they had not restarted their work sites at all”.
And here’s an important judgment: In ‘Neet applies to minority institutions: SC’, the daily notes the Supreme Court’s praising of National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test as a “regulatory measure that is in the largest national interest”. This was part of the top court’s ruling that the test does not “violate the rights of minorities”, it adds.
It says that the positive cases in upscale localities were restricted to those with travel history or having contact with someone with foreign travel history. “But now, a month later, the number of cases from slum pockets across the city have risen exponentially,” says Mirror.
First, they want “a near total government guarantee on all incremental loans” for MSMEs and “also on up to 20% of new asset purchases from non-bank lenders”. What seems to be worsening their frustration is that “the government [is] undecided on how much it can offer as a guarantee”, it adds.
In some saddening news, 40 per cent of Indian restaurants and cloud kitchens will likely shut shop for good “in the absence of a government bailout”, according to the National Restaurant Association of India. Before coronavirus, the industry had a turnover of Rs. 4 lakh crore and employed about 7 million people, the paper regrettably reports.