International

India’s rising output of Covid-19 vaccines and the inoculation of more than half its adult population with at least one dose are raising hopes the country will return as an exporter within months, ramping up from early next year. After donating or selling 66mn doses to nearly 100 countries, India barred exports in the middle of April to focus on domestic immunisation as infections exploded, upsetting the inoculation plans of many African and South Asian countries. India’s daily vaccinations surpassed 10mn doses on Friday, with national vaccine production more than doubling since April and set to rise again in the coming weeks. New production lines have been set up, a vaccine developed by Cadila Healthcare won recent approval, and commercial production of Russia’s Sputnik V is starting in India. The Serum Institute of India (SII), the world’s biggest vaccine maker, is now producing about 150mn doses a month of its version of the AstraZeneca shot, more than twice its April output of about 65mn, a source with knowledge of the matter said. “No fixed timeline on exports but the company hopes to restart in a few months,” said the source, who declined to be named without approval to talk on the matter. SII, which has previously indicated exports could resume by year-end, did not respond to a request for comment. Global vaccine sharing platform Covax hopes India will restart foreign sales sooner than later. “With successful national vaccination and the arrival of more products, we are hoping that Indian supply to Covax will resume as quickly as possible,” a spokesperson for the platform’s co-lead GAVI said. India, a major international producer of many other vaccines, could play a “similarly transformative role in the global response to Covid-19,” the spokesperson said. India’s health ministry and the foreign ministry, which coordinates vaccine exports, did not respond to a request for comment. Bharat Biotech, the maker of India’s first domestically developed Covid-19 shot, on Sunday inaugurated a new factory with a production capacity of 10mn doses a month. It said it was “marching towards” a goal of a total annual capacity of about 1bn doses of the drug, Covaxin. Infections, meanwhile, are again rising in India after an explosive outbreak in April and May. But the country has administered more than 633mn vaccine doses, with at least one dose to 52% of its 944mn adults and two doses to more than 15%. A government source said in June the US experience showed that vaccinations tend to slow down after a big majority of people get their shots. That might give SII a chance to export excess output, said the source. The chief of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party said this month India could produce as many as 1.1bn vaccine doses between September and December, enough to fully immunise all adults in the country this year. India has so far given emergency authorisation to six Covid-19 shots, four of which are being produced locally. One more domestic vaccine is expected to be approved soon while many more are going through mid-stage trials.

India has asked the states of Kerala and Maharashtra to consider night curfews in areas with high Covid-19 case numbers as the country reported more than 40,000 new infections for two days in a row yesterday. Cases fell to a five-month-low of 25,166 in the middle of the month but have risen sharply in the last three days, mainly in Kerala that recently celebrated a big festival during which families typically come together. India reported 44,658 new Covid-19 infections yesterday, taking the total to 32.6mn, the most in the world after the US. Deaths rose by 496 to 436,861. Kerala, on India’s southern tip, has accounted for nearly 60% of the new cases in the past week and more than half of the total active cases, followed by 16% in the western state of Maharashtra. Kerala contributed 30,077 cases in the past 24 hours, followed by Maharashtra with 5,108 cases, Tamil Nadu with 1,559 cases, Andhra Pradesh with 1,539 cases and Karnataka with 1,213 cases These five states account for 88.45% of the new cases. “More efforts would be required to arrest the increase in infections,” the ministry of home affairs said in a statement on Thursday evening after its secretary held a meeting with the two states. “This would require adequate intervention in geographical areas having higher infection, through measures such as contact tracing, vaccination drives and Covid-appropriate behaviour.” The ministry also said that the states had been asked to “explore the possibility of placing night curfew in areas of high positivity” and assured additional supplies of vaccines. India has so far administered more than 611mn vaccine doses, giving at least one dose to more than half of its 944mn adults and the required two doses to about 15%. The county administered 79,48,439 doses in the last 24 hours. Meanwhile Reliance Life Sciences (RLS), part of India’s largest conglomerate, is expected to start phase I clinical studies of its indigenous Covid-19 vaccine soon. The Subject Expert Committee (SEC), which advises the drug drug regulator on vaccines and new drugs, reviewed the company’s application and is learnt to have recommended it for approval on Thursday. The vaccine under development is a recombinant protein-based Covid-19 vaccine, and is expected to be launched by the first quarter 2022. The company started the development process last year, with the vaccine entering the pre-clinical stage in October. Phase I testing marks the first time the vaccine is tested is tested in a small group of adults, usually between 20 to 80 people, to evaluate its safety and measure the immune response it generates.

Vilified by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party for its high Covid-19 cases, Kerala’s apparent poor record may actually hold crucial lessons for the country in containing the outbreak as authorities brace for a possible third wave of infections. The opposition-ruled, densely populated southern state is currently reporting the most number of coronavirus cases in the country and accounts for the second-highest national tally — unflattering headline numbers that Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has seized upon as a reflection of bungled local leadership. However, a Reuters analysis of national and state data, and interviews with epidemiologists and Kerala health authorities paint a different picture. It shows the state’s containment measures have helped to catch infections early, allowing authorities to better manage the illness and dramatically lower the death rate — a stark contrast to people dying in carparks and outside hospitals for lack of oxygen and beds in big cities like Delhi at the height of the health crisis a few months earlier. “While the federal government may have its views on rapid antigen tests, it is important to consider that the state’s strategies have by and large succeeded in not just keeping mortality low but also in being able to detect one in six cases compared to one in 33 nationally,” said Rajib Dasgupta, head of the Centre of Social Medicine & Community Health at New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University. The efficient detection rate and its population density at more than twice the national average explain the high number of cases in Kerala. All the same, at 0.5%, Kerala still has the lowest fatality rate among all but one thinly populated state. The national figure is 1.4% and it is 1.3% for the country’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh. The difference comes down to Kerala’s reliance on rapid antigen tests to detect and strictly isolate infected people at home, an approach the federal health ministry has sharply criticised but which state officials argue has helped them to better allocate hospital beds and oxygen supplies for those who really need them. The government-recommended RT-PCR tests are more accurate but take longer to produce results, meaning by the time a positive Covid-19 case is confirmed the infected person is more likely to have developed severe symptoms and passed it on to others in a vicious cycle of more infections and deaths. Kerala’s rapid test results allow for early treatment in home isolation which then narrows the virus’ path to infections, state officials say. These factors, along with the strained medical resources across much of India, largely explain why the overall national death rate is much higher than in the Communist-run state. Kerala officials also say a state-run support service that includes phone consultation, provision of drugs and pulse oximeters that detect blood oxygen levels for people recovering at home provide a bulwark in the battle against the disease. Delhi had a similar support structure but it collapsed when cases surged. “We do have a different model and our fatality rate shows our model is on the right track,” Kerala Health Minister Veena George said. But Kerala officials acknowledge that the fast-evolving pandemic can undo even the best thought-out plans unless authorities remain nimble and flexible. When Reuters recently visited Kerala’s most populous Malappuram district, which is reporting the greatest number of infections in India, a quarter of the 344 Covid beds in its biggest hospital were vacant and oxygen supply was ample. The Indian Council of Medical Research has recommended lockdowns for districts where more than 10% of the tests return positive results. The rate is about 15% for Kerala and even higher in Malappuram, but shops and restaurants are open for business. Kerala officials argue that they are able to keep businesses open as the state has the best testing rate among Indian states — 86 tests per 100 people, compared with about 33 in Uttar Pradesh — meaning they are able to catch infections early and ensure timely treatment. The model, epidemiologists say, can be replicated in few other states with good health facilities, such as neighbouring Tamil Nadu. “Their surveillance is good, they detect cases early and their testing is very focused,” M D Gupte, a retired director of the National Institute of Epidemiology who advises the federal government on immunisations, said about Kerala.

India will supply millions of additional Covid-19 vaccine doses to its states to try to inoculate all school teachers by early next month, the health minister said yesterday, as the country gradually resumes physical classes. The pandemic has hit the country of 1.35bn people particularly hard and hundreds of millions of its students have been stuck at home for months, with little or no access to online education for a majority of the poor. India last week approved its first Covid-19 vaccine for older children and is trying to urgently immunise all of its nearly 10mn school teachers. The country has been vaccinating its adults since the middle of January. “We have requested all states to try to vaccinate all school teachers on priority before Teachers’ Day, which is celebrated on September 5,” Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya said on Twitter. He said states would be given more than 20mn additional doses for the purpose. Several states have attempted to reopen schools since the pandemic began last year, but some had to shut them down when infections were detected on campuses. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home state Gujarat said it would resume physical classes for middle school students from September 2, at half the capacity, for the first time in more than 18 months. Schools reopened for older children nearly a month ago. A parliamentary report said this month the pandemic disrupted the education of nearly 320mn Indian students in various schools, colleges and universities. It recommended “accentuated vaccine programmes for all students, teachers and allied staff so that schools may start functioning normally at the earliest”. India has administered 596mn vaccine doses, giving at least one dose to nearly half of its 944mn adults and the required two doses to 14%. It has reported 32.5mn infections, the most in the world after the US, and 435,758 deaths.

India has announced plans to lease state-owned assets to the private sector in a bid to raise Rs6tn rupees ($81bn) to repair public finances battered by the pandemic and fund new infrastructure. Asia’s third-largest economy was left reeling from a Covid-19 surge and strict lockdowns enforced to contain the virus, creating a significant budget deficit and pushing millions into poverty. Private firms will be able to lease on a long-term basis over 26,000kms of roads, power transmission lines, hydroelectric and solar power assets, phone networks, and nearly 15,000 telecom towers, under the plans just announced. Also up for grabs will be some 8,000kms of natural gas pipelines, 15 railway stations, railway lines, 25 airports, and a number of sports stadiums, according to the four-year plan dubbed the National Monetisation Pipeline. “The ownership of the assets remain with the government and there should be mandatory hand back (to the state),” Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said. “So by bringing in private participation in this, you will be able to monetise it better and ensure further investment in infrastructure building,” she said. Proceeds will help replenish government finances squeezed by India’s worst recession since independence as a result of the pandemic, and to fund new infrastructure projects. India’s opposition hit out at the plans, with Congress party chief Rahul Gandhi saying “assets created over seven decades (are) being gifted to cronies.” “The future of India is being sold,” he said. India enforced one of the world’s toughest lockdowns in 2020 when the pandemic began, leaving millions without work almost overnight. Restrictions were then steadily eased but re-imposed in April in a devastating second wave that overwhelmed hospitals. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government had previously announced plans to raise billions of dollars through the privatisation of Air India, Bharat Petroleum, and a share sale of a major insurer. The planned sales are in line with Modi’s strategic divestment policy, under which the state will retain presence in only a few identified sectors with the rest privatised. “The government does own very valuable assets and this should see investor interest,” said Sonal Varma, economist at Nomura Holdings in Singapore. “This will be like an asset exchange, where the government sells its infrastructure assets and uses the revenue earned to invest in other infrastructure priorities that it has set.” The monetisation plan, announced by Sitharaman in her annual budget speech, will serve as a medium-term road map for the government’s asset sale initiative, state-run think tank NITI Aayog said in a statement. The income from the asset sales is key to narrowing the nation’s budget deficit, which Sitharaman expects to be 6.8% of the gross domestic product in the financial year that began April 1, from 9.3% in the previous year. Several economists expect the country will miss that target due to economic disruptions caused by a second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic.

India’s capital New Delhi opened its first “smog tower” yesterday aimed at reducing the air pollution blamed for thousands of premature deaths every year, but experts were sceptical. Concentrations of tiny deadly particles in Delhi’s air regularly exceed safe limits by up to 20 times, particularly in winter when its 20mn people are enveloped in a noxious grey blanket of smog. Forty giant fans on the 25-metre (82-foot) tower will pump 1,000 cubic metres of air per second through filters that halve the amount of harmful particulates in a radius of one square kilometre, according to engineers. “This is a big day for Delhi in its fight for clean air against pollution,” Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said after the inauguration near the busy shopping area of Connaught Place. The installation “is being looked at in an experimental way. We will analyse the data and if it’s effective, more towers will be built across Delhi,” Kejriwal added. Delhi’s environment minister Gopal Rai said the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) will form a team of experts for the study which is expected to last two years. The Delhi Pollution Control Committee is the nodal agency for the tower, while NBCC is the project management consultancy and the executing agency was Tata Projects Limited. A Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system has been installed in the tower to collect data and monitor its functioning. The tower cost $2mn and critics say erecting a sufficient number to clean the air substantially across the city would cost huge amounts of public money, and that efforts would be better directed at the sources of the smog. These include vehicle exhaust, heavy and small-scale industry, construction activity, the combustion of waste and fuel, and in winter the burning of crops in neighbouring regions. “Let’s just be clear that this is futile, an absolute waste,” Karthik Ganesan from the Council on Energy, Environment and Water said.  “Now that taxpayers’ money has been spent, let Delhi be the test case for all other Indian cities... to ensure no other city spends on such ideas which we can’t afford,” he added. India has 14 of the world’s 15 most polluted cities, according to the World Health Organisation. A 2020 study in the Lancet found there were 1.67mn deaths in the country attributable to air pollution in 2019 including almost 17,500 in Delhi. In 2018 China built a much larger 60-metre smog tower in the polluted city of Xian, but the experiment has not spread to other cities so far.

India’s drug regulator has granted emergency use approval for Zydus Cadila’s Covid-19 vaccine, the world’s first DNA shot against the coronavirus, in adults and children aged 12 years and above. The approval gives a boost to India’s vaccination programme, which aims to inoculate all eligible adults by December, and will provide the first shot for those under 18, as the country still struggles to contain the virus spread in some states. The vaccine, ZyCoV-D, uses a section of genetic material from the virus that gives instructions as either DNA or RNA to make the specific protein that the immune system recognises and responds to. Unlike most Covid-19 vaccines, which need two doses or even a single dose, ZyCoV-D is administered in three doses. The generic drugmaker, listed as Cadila Healthcare, aims to make 100-120mn doses of ZyCoV-D annually and has already begun stockpiling the vaccine. Zydus Cadila’s vaccine, developed in partnership with the department of biotechnology, is the second home-grown shot to get emergency authorisation in India after Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin. The drugmaker said in July its Covid-19 vaccine was effective against the new coronavirus mutants, especially the Delta variant, and that the shot is administered using a needle-free applicator as opposed to traditional syringes. The regulatory nod makes ZyCoV-D the sixth vaccine authorised for use in the country where only about 9.18% of the entire population has been fully vaccinated so far, according to Johns Hopkins data. Zydus Cadila had also submitted data evaluating a two-dose regimen for the shot in July and plans to seek regulatory approval for the same. The firm had applied for the authorisation of ZyCoV-D on July 1, based on an efficacy rate of 66.6% in a late-stage trial of over 28,000 volunteers nationwide. Meanwhile, Johnson & Johnson has sought approval from Indian drug regulators to conduct a study of its Covid-19 vaccine among 12- to 17-year-olds, the company said yesterday. Conducting vaccine clinical trials among adolescents is imperative to achieve herd immunity against the coronavirus, J&J said in an e-mailed statement. The US pharma giant had received emergency use approval for its single-dose vaccine in India earlier this month, making it the fifth authorised vaccine in the country. While J&J has a supply agreement with Indian vaccine maker Biological E Ltd to bring its shot to the country, the company had said that it was too early to give a delivery timeline. Earlier data showed that the reproduction rate of Covid infection in India has dropped below 1 implying that 100 infected people are spreading the infection to less than 100 people, to 89 people as the R-value at present stands at 0.89. The Covid-19 situation in the country is improving with active cases falling to around 3.6 lakh, the lowest in 150 days. However, the country is witnessing a considerable number of breakthrough infections and a very high proportion of the Delta variant is responsible for breakthrough infection after either one of two doses of vaccination, the Indian Sars-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium (INSACOG) said. However, the present vaccination drive continues to be effective in reducing severe disease and death, the INSACOG said.

Several Indian states are building facilities with more paediatric beds, plus oxygen, due to concern that children returning to school without being vaccinated will be among the most vulnerable during a third wave of coronavirus infections. Health administrators have taken heed of trends in the US, where a record number of children have been hospitalised as the coronavirus Delta variant, first found in India, has surged through unvaccinated populations. During a second wave of infections in India that peaked in April and May, hundreds of thousands of people died for want of oxygen and medical facilities, and now there are concerns that another third wave will gather during the winter months. “We don’t know how the virus will behave, but we cannot afford to be unprepared this time around,” Suhas Prabhu, who heads the Paediatric Task Force in the big western state of Maharashtra, said. “No mother should have to run around looking for a hospital bed when her child is sick.” The Maharashtra government has stockpiled medicines, and built facilities for additional paediatric beds and oxygen provisions in new centres in Mumbai and Aurangabad. Built on empty stretches of land or in re-purposed stadiums, the Mumbai facilities have a total of 1,500 paediatric beds, most of them with oxygen. “We can upgrade this capacity to double if needed,” Suresh Kakani, a senior official with Mumbai’s civic body said. In neighbouring Gujarat, authorities have set up 15,000 paediatric oxygen beds, health commissioner Jai Prakash Shivahare said. India provides vaccines to people above the age 18. Most vaccines administered in India are made by AstraZeneca, while shots produced by local manufacturer Bharat Biotech are also being used. Another local firm Zydus Cadilla and Bharat Biotech are separately testing vaccines for children but the results are not expected until the year end. Meanwhile, schools in at least 11 of India’s 28 states have opened after more than a year of closures, raising worries these could become breeding grounds for transmission of the virus. As of March 2021, less than 1% of India’s coronavirus deaths were in the under 15 age group, according to the health ministry, and officials say the severity of the disease in this age group has been minimal so far. Epidemiologists say there is no evidence to show that the Delta variant or any other mutations affect children more than other parts of the population.

Outside the main iron gate of the Indian embassy in Kabul, a group of Taliban fighters waited — armed with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenade launchers. Inside the compound were 150 Indian diplomats and nationals — growing increasingly nervous as they watched news of the Taliban tightening their grip on the capital, which they took a day earlier without a fight. Their position was a precarious one. India had strongly backed the government that took over when the Taliban were ousted, earning them hatred and enmity from the group. But the Taliban fighters outside the Indian embassy weren’t there to extract revenge, but rather to escort them to Kabul airport, where a military aircraft was on standby to evacuate them after New Delhi decided to shut its mission. As the first of nearly two dozen vehicles drove out of the embassy late on Monday, some of the fighters waved and smiled at the passengers — an AFP correspondent among them. One guided them towards the street leading out of the city’s green zone and on the main road to the airport. The embassy’s decision to ask the Taliban to shepherd the Indians out was made when the fighters closed access to the once heavily fortified neighbourhood after capturing Kabul the previous day. A quarter of the 200 or so people who had gathered at the foreign mission had already been flown out of Afghanistan before the country’s new leaders took full control of the city. “When we were evacuating the second group...we faced the Taliban, who refused to allow us to exit the green zone,” said an official who left with Monday’s group. “We then decided to contact the Taliban and ask them to escort our convoy out.” Two separate pledges of an escort failed to materialise during the day, unnerving the large group bunkered down at the embassy, with one diplomat likening the experience to “house arrest”. It had been dark for several hours when the cars finally left the compound and embarked on the 5km journey to the airport. The snail-paced journey took five hours, with passengers passing each minute in constant fear of a potential attack. Unfamiliar checkpoints had been set up and thousands of people displaced by the war were along the road. At intervals, the Taliban fighters accompanying the Indian convoy jumped out of their own vehicles and aimed their guns at the crowds, forcing them to step back. One man who appeared to be commanding the troops fired a few rounds in the air to scare back a large group gathered around one intersection. The escort departed once the convoy reached the airport, where American soldiers had taken up positions and were co-ordinating flights. After a wait of another two hours, the group boarded a C-17 Indian military transport plane that took off at dawn, landing at an air force base in the west Indian state of Gujarat later that morning. “I’m so happy to be back,” Shirin Pathare, an Air India employee flown out of Kabul, told AFP as he stepped off the aircraft. Another Indian citizen, cradling his two-year-old daughter, recalled the chaos and anxiety of his hasty departure from his office and the city. “Just hours before I took the flight a group of Taliban visited my workplace,” said the man, declining to give his name. “They were polite but when they went, they took two of our vehicles. I immediately knew it was time for me and my family to leave,” he added.

India administered more than 8.8mn doses of Covid-19 vaccines in the past 24 hours, government data showed yesterday, close to its all-time record and speeding up a campaign to inoculate all eligible adults by December. The surge in inoculations came alongside a sharp decline in daily new infections that fell to 25,166, the lowest since March 16, health ministry said. India has undertaken one of the world’s largest Covidd-19 vaccination drives and has so far administered 554mn doses, giving at least one dose to about 46% of its estimated 944mn adults. Only about 13% of the population have had the required two doses. After hitting a record high of 9.2mn doses on June 21, the pace of daily inoculations had dropped to around 4.2mn on an average in July, according to data compiled from the government’s CoWIN website. In the first two weeks of August, India administered about 5mn doses on an average everyday. Experts have said India needs to administer 10mn doses a day to achieve its aim of inoculating all adults by December. “For each day we fall short of it, the required target goes further up,” Rijo John, health economist and a professor at the Rajagiri College of Social Sciences in the southern city of Kochi. “Realistically, I do not think we will be able to cover all adults fully by this year’s end.” Kerala on Monday logged 12,294 new Covid-19 cases pushing the infection count to 36,81,965, as the number of people succumbing to the disease rose to 18,743 with 142 additional deaths.

An Indian air force plane evacuated over 170 people from Kabul yesterday, including India’s ambassador to Afghanistan, a government official said, as diplomats and civilians scrambled to get out of the country. The flight landed in the western Indian city of Jamnagar for refuelling on the way to Delhi, Jamnagar collector Sourabh Pardhi said. Speaking to reporters, ambassador Rudrendra Tandon said that nearly 200 personnel of the Indian mission in Afghanistan had been evacuated within three days, alongside Indian civilians working in the country. “You cannot imagine how great it is to be back home,” Tandon said. “We are back home safely, securely, without any accidents or harm to any of our people.” Tandon described the situation in Afghanistan as “fluid”, adding that a small number of Indian nationals remained in the country who authorities were attempting to bring back. India, which has invested millions of dollars in development projects across Afghanistan, once operated four consulates in the country, besides the embassy in Kabul. The last operating consulate in Mazar-i-Sharif was shut down a week ago, days before Taliban took control of the northern city Meanwhile, the Indian government has announced a new category of electronic visas to fast-track applications of Afghans who want to come to India in view of the prevailing situation in Afghanistan. “MHA reviews visa provisions in view of the current situation in Afghanistan. A new category of electronic visa called “e-Emergency X-Misc Visa” was introduced to fast-track visa applications for entry into India,” the home ministry said in a statement. All Afghans, irrespective of their religion, can apply for the ‘e-Emergency X-Misc Visa’ online and the applications will be processed in New Delhi. Officials said since Indian missions in Afghanistan are shut, the visa can be applied online and applications will be examined and processed in New Delhi. The visa will initially be valid for six months, they said. Security issues will be looked into while processing the applications and granting the visa to Afghan nationals, the officials added. Meanwhile, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said India is closely monitoring the situation in Afghanistan . In a series of tweets, Jaishankar said: “Understand the anxiety of those seeking to return to India. Airport operations are the main challenge. Discussions on with partners in that regard.” The ministry of external affairs has also set up a special Afghanistan cell to co-ordinate repatriation and other requests from the country.

Authorities in India’s financial capital Mumbai have almost fully resumed suburban rail services for the first time in more than a year, as part of a wider easing of Covid-19 restrictions, as the pace of infections declined. Previously, only essential workers were allowed to use the trains, but those who are fully vaccinated were allowed on board trains from Sunday. Parks, seafronts and playgrounds were also allowed to stay open for all until 10pm local time (1630 GMT), from the previous closing hours of 4pm, the city’s civic body said. Yesterday, the second day that trains were 95% open, crowds were sparse because of a public holiday. In normal times, more than 8mn people travel on Mumbai’s local trains every day, but services have been closed to commuters since March 2020, when the first Covid-19 related lockdown was announced in the state. In February this year, commuters were allowed on trains at non-peak hours, before being shut again as the country faced a devastating second wave that killed hundreds of thousands. The thriving metropolis in the largest industrial state of Maharashtra, saw a peak of 11,000 daily cases a day at the height of the second wave in May-June, but new cases have fallen after stringent lockdown curbs, with overnight infections dropping to 267 new cases and four deaths on Sunday. India is relying on two home-produced vaccines, Astra Zeneca’s Covishield, which is manufactured in India by the Serum Institute of India, and Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin. Almost half of India’s 950mn adults have received at least one dose of the vaccine so far. The cumulative coronavirus vaccine shots administered in India surpassed the 550mn-mark yesterday, the government announced. Taking to Twitter, Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya wrote, “In record-breaking progress, India administers 550mn Covid-19 vaccines. Let’s strengthen India’s fight against coronavirus. Let’s get vaccinated!” India as a whole reported 32,937 new infections of the novel coronavirus in the last 24 hours, taking its total caseload to 32.23mn, data from the federal health ministry showed yesterday. Deaths rose overnight by 417, with the country’s Covid-19 death toll standing at 431,642, the health ministry said. Amidst threat of the third wave of Covid-19 pandemic looming large, the Indian government yesterday restricted export of rapid antigen tests used to detect Sars CoV2 virus infection. In a notification dated August 16, the directorate general of foreign trade (DGFT) amended the export policy for Covid-19 rapid antigen testing kits by putting them under restricted category with immediate effect.

India will launch a Rs100tn ($1.35tn) national infrastructure plan that will help generate jobs and expand use of cleaner fuels to achieve the country’s climate goals, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said yesterday. The infrastructure programme, called “Gati Shakti”, will help boost productivity of industries and boost the economy, Modi said. The prime minister addressed the nation from New Delhi’s 17th century Mughal-era Red Fort to mark the 74th anniversary of India’s independence from British rule. He said the infrastructure plan will create job opportunities for millions of Indian youth. “We will launch a masterplan for Gati Shakti, a big programme...(it) will create job opportunities for hundreds of thousands,” Modi said. While Modi did not announce details of the plan, he said the plan will help local manufacturers compete globally and create new avenues of future economic growth. Boosting infrastructure in Asia’s third largest economy is at the heart of the Modi’s plan to pull back the country from a sharp economic decline worsened by the Covid-19 pandemic. In the last fiscal year, India’s economic output fell by a record 7.3% and a second wave of Covid-19 has delayed economic recovery. Economists fear there will be no rebound similar to the ones seen in the US and other major economies. The prime minister also set a target to become energy independent by 2047, saying the goal can be achieved through a mix of electric mobility, moving to a gas-based economy and making the country a hub for hydrogen production. Modi said the country spends more than Rs12tn rupees annually on energy imports and becoming energy independent was critical, as he also announced the launch of a National Hydrogen Mission to boost the government’s clean energy plans. “India is moving fast towards achieving its climate goals,” he said. Modi added India was committed to meeting targets for the reduction of its carbon footprint. In his 90-minute speech, Modi also listed his government’s achievements since 2014 and hailed India’s coronavirus vaccination campaign. “We are proud that we didn’t have to depend on any other country for Covid-19 vaccines. Imagine what would have happened if India didn’t have its own vaccine,” he said. India has given more than 500mn doses of vaccines but its vaccination drive has been marred by its slow pace.  About 11% of eligible adult Indians have been fully vaccinated so far. During his address, Modi paid tributes to those who have died of the coronavirus, saying “the pain of losing them will stay with us forever.” Praising healthcare workers and scientists for their contribution during the pandemic, he said the country worked with “extraordinary pace” in every area during the crisis. Nearly two-thirds of the 430,000 deaths due to Covid-19 that India has recorded took place during a lethal second wave in which the country’s health infrastructure was overwhelmed. A huge shortage of oxygen and hospital beds, even in cities like New Delhi, with the country’s best medical infrastructure, left many families struggling to get oxygen supplies and hospital beds.

Twitter unblocked yesterday the accounts of India’s main opposition party Congress, its leader Rahul Gandhi and other party officials, a day after suspending the accounts over a tweet on the alleged rape and murder of a nine-year-old girl. Gandhi’s account has 19.5mn followers. It was locked after he posted a photograph of himself with the parents of a girl who was allegedly raped and killed in New Delhi on August 1, saying that the family deserved justice. The accounts have been restored after Twitter reviewed Gandhi’s submission of formal consent from people depicted in the image, the US social media giant said in an e-mailed statement, adding that it has withheld the tweet in India. The tweet is available globally but withheld in India under laws relating to disclosure of the identity of children and victims of sexual assault, according to a notification from Twitter to a Congress leader, and seen by Reuters, after his account was reinstated. Congress spokesperson Randeep Surjewala confirmed the restoration of all accounts and said the party “fought undeterred” against the block. Gandhi criticised Twitter on Friday for blocking the accounts, saying that the platform was playing partisan politics. A Twitter spokesperson said its rules were “enforced judiciously and impartially”. For months, Twitter has been in a tussle with the government for not swiftly complying with India’s new IT rules that required the firm to hire compliance officers by May and are aimed at regulating content on social media. Twitter completed the hiring and complied with the rules this month, the government has said. Twitter’s India chief, Manish Maheshwari, will take up a new internal role in the United States, it said on Friday, without giving any reasons. An internal staff memo seen by Reuters thanked him for his work in India during “extraordinarily challenging times”.

Rahul Gandhi, the leader of India’s main opposition party, yesterday slammed Twitter for blocking a tweet over the alleged rape and murder of a nine-year-old girl, saying the platform was playing partisan politics. The criticism of the US microblogging giant by the Congress party comes as Twitter is trying to address concerns raised by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government over compliance issues. Gandhi’s account, which has 19.5mn followers, was locked after he posted a photograph of himself with the parents of a girl who was allegedly raped and killed in New Delhi on August 1, saying the family deserved justice. Indian law bars disclosing the identity of victims of sexual assault and the National Commission for Protection of Child Right issued a notice to Twitter asking for its removal. But Gandhi said in a video released to reporters that by shutting him down, Twitter was interfering in politics and playing into the hands of the Modi government, which is bitterly opposed to Gandhi. “This is an attack on the democratic structure of the country. It’s obvious now that Twitter is actually not a neutral, objective platform. It’s something that listens to what the government of the day says.” While Gandhi’s account is still up and all his tweets visible until August 6, the platform hid his post about the girl and has blocked him from tweeting further, pending his deletion of the tweet. The accounts of several other Congress leaders were also locked for tweeting the picture. A Twitter spokesperson said that the platform’s rules were “enforced judiciously and impartially.” “We have taken proactive action on several hundred Tweets that posted an image that violated our Rules, and may continue to do so in line with our range of enforcement options,” the spokesperson said in an e-mail. “Our aim is always to protect individuals’ privacy and safety.” Congress spokesman Vineet Punia declined to comment on whether Gandhi planned to delete the tweet about the girl.  Police have taken four people into custody after the attack, which triggered widespread anger and protests in the capital as the latest case of violence against women in the country.

India expects to get about 266mn Covid-19 vaccine doses in August as a simpler licensing process has helped the government secure far more than earlier expected, the president of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party said yesterday. Late last month, a senior government official told reporters that the government could only count on getting about 150mn doses in August. Since then, India’s drug regulator has approved the Johnson & Johnson vaccine — though the company has not yet committed to a delivery schedule — and commercial production of Russia’s Sputnik V in India could start too. Indian drugmaker Cadila Healthcare’s ZyCoV-D could also be approved soon, the health minister said this month. Writing in a column for the Times of India daily, Jagat Prakash Nadda, president of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, credited Modi for making it easier for vaccine makers to get approval. “Among the many significant decisions taken by the PM is simplifying compulsory licensing policy to speed up vaccine production,” Nadda wrote. “It ensured clearance for manufacturing of Russia’s Sputnik V in the country and just a few days back Johnson & Johnson vaccine has also been given clearance. In the coming days more vaccines will be available in India.” Nadda, who was the health minister in Modi’s first term, said India’s vaccine supply will reach 266.5mn doses in August, 261.5mn in September, 282.5mn in October, 282.5mn in November and 285mn doses in December. The health ministry, whose end-July target of supplying 516mn doses fell short, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Nadda’s projections.

A northeastern Indian state that has for years been a big transit point for illicit drugs originating in neighbouring Myanmar has launched a massive crackdown on the trade, seizing record amounts and arresting nearly 2,000 people since May. Assam, four of whose neighbouring states have open and rugged borders with Myanmar, connects the northeast to the rest of India. It has received praise for the drug clampdown from ruling and opposition politicians but been criticised for alleged human rights abuses, including the shooting of suspected traffickers. Assam’s ties with one of the states, Mizoram, has frayed too after Assam linked the drugs fight to a recent territorial clash between the two states in which police forces fired at each other. Police say Assam, the most populous northeastern state, is where traffickers gather or store drugs such as heroin and methamphetamine. They estimate about a fifth is sold locally and the rest in India’s richer towns and cities. Myanmar is one of Asia’s main sources of illegal production of methamphetamine, or “crazy drug” yaba, as well as heroin, according to the International Narcotics Control Board and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). “I hope I’m wrong, but the drug trafficking situation in northeast India looks somewhat like it did in Bangladesh a few years ago before methamphetamine really took off,” said Jeremy Douglas, UNODC’s regional representative for Southeast Asia and the Pacific. “We’ve seen a pattern of small intermittent seizures of yaba becoming slightly larger and more frequent, and scattered reports of local use — very similar.” Bangladesh, which reported the world’s largest seizures of prescription opioids in 2019, has become South Asia’s biggest destination for yaba, with a market estimated at more than $3bn. Police there have killed hundreds of suspected drug dealers since 2018. In a sign of how India’s trade has flourished, last week the junior home minister presented to parliament data on drugs and arms smugglers that showed many more arrests happened on its border with Myanmar than other neighbours such as Pakistan and Bangladesh between 2018 and 2020. Assam this year has already made more drug seizures and related arrests than it did in any previous full year. Much of the action has happened since an ambitious party colleague of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Himanta Biswa Sarma, became chief minister of Assam in May and said he had given police a free hand to act on drugs, including to shoot suspects when needed. “The Assam government has adopted a zero-tolerance policy against drugs,” Sarma said in a speech at a public burning of seized drugs in July. “I have asked the police to take the most extreme step allowed by law against drug peddlers and the kingpins when needed.” Sarma, who estimates the trade in his state is worth hundreds of millions of dollars, said he could not immediately speak with Reuters for this story. In the past three months, police in Assam have arrested 1,783 people, killed two, wounded five, and seized drugs worth tens of millions of dollars, according to data shared by the state’s police. Assam is the only point of exit for drugs smuggled into India from Myanmar, said the state’s special director general of police Gyanendra Pratap Singh. “No crime can ever be stopped, but our goal is to ensure that we make it as difficult as lawfully possible for anybody to carry drugs through Assam, and make the availability of drugs to the youngsters of Assam almost impossible,” he told Reuters at his residence secured by many young policemen. Singh, who is also leading an investigation into the deadly July clashes with Mizoram, said a nexus that facilitates the passage of drugs through Mizoram had a role in the violence to divert attention from the fight on narcotics. Mizoram denied the charge and said it made record seizures of methamphetamine this year itself. It has also objected to Assam’s new policy of inspecting all vehicles coming from Mizoram to “check trafficking of illicit drugs”. “We support the crackdown on drugs, it’s a menace to society” said David Lalthangliana, officer on special duty at Mizoram’s home department. “But let it be a joint effort, let it not be discriminatory where you check vehicles coming in from only one state.” Opposition leaders in Assam have also accused the state government of human rights violations in dealing with criminals, including drug peddlers, and have demanded a judicial enquiry into police encounters that have killed or injured suspects.

Rescuers were working to clear tonnes of rocks and mud yesterday after a landslide buried about 60 people in India’s Himalayan north, killing at least 10. A bus carrying between 20 and 25 people had been buried under rubble, said the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), which is involved in the rescue efforts. “A total of 10 dead bodies have been retrieved from the spot. Fourteen injured have been rescued,” the ITBP said in a statement. A local police official at the site, which is in Himachal Pradesh state’s Kinnaur district, bordering Tibet, said rocks were still falling in the area. The 14 rescued people had injuries “but should be okay after treatment”, the official added. Television channels showed images of a truck and cars mangled and half-buried in the debris as well as slabs of rock and bits of tree on a road. “The bus, which was reported under the rubble, is visible now. Earth mover machines are clearing the debris. It will take one to two hours to reach the bus,” the ITBP said in an update from the rescue site. A statement from Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Jairam Thakur’s office said “about 60 people are feared to be buried under the debris”.  The bus driver and conductor had been rescued, Thakur’s office said. Kinnaur deputy commissioner, Abid Hussain Sadiq said several vehicles are buried under the debris. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke with Thakur and offered the national government’s support for the rescue operation, which also involves the local border police. Landslides are common in India’s northern Himalayan region, particularly in the current monsoon season when heavy rains lead to subsidence of earth and rocks.  The situation is exacerbated by climate change making the monsoon more erratic and melting glaciers higher in the mountains. Roads in the region are also often poorly maintained. Last month, nine tourists were killed after huge boulders fell on their cars in another part of Kinnaur. A video that was circulated online showed boulders tumbling downhill and smashing into a bridge. Many such videos have emerged from the state this season along with cloudburst and flashfloods. In another incident, a stretch of the road collapsed as a hillside crashed down in dramatic visuals of a landslide at Sirmaur after two days of incessant rain.

Neeraj Chopra’s historic feat in winning India’s first-ever track-and-field gold at the Olympics will be commemorated every year, officials said yesterday, as the javelin star spoke of his desire to inspire future athletes. A medal-starved India revelled in Chopra’s stunning achievement in Tokyo, which ended a more than century-long wait for an athletics gold, with politicians, celebrities and the general public heaping praise on the 23-year-old. The Athletics Federation of India said August 7 — the date of Chopra’s triumph — would be dubbed “Javelin Throw Day”, with annual state meets for the sport held across the nation of 1.3bn people. “I feel honoured that I could become an inspiration for Indian athletics and javelin in particular,” the farmer’s son from Khandra village just outside capital New Delhi told reporters yesterday. “I am happy kids will get an opportunity to compete in javelin events and hope that we get more medals in athletics.” The new poster boy of Indian sports, with his boyish charm and tousled hair, has come a long way from being teased as an overweight child to throwing 87.58 metres for the gold in the javelin final. Hundreds of fans had gathered at Delhi’s international airport on Monday to give Chopra a hero’s welcome. Chopra said the enormity of the achievement only sunk in when he saw people banging drums and playing music as his car left the airport and headed for a party welcoming him back home. “It is a dream of any athlete of the world to win an Olympic medal and there is nothing bigger than gold, so the feeling was surreal. When I arrived in India the mood was different and when I landed, I realised I had done something big for the nation that I am getting this honour.”

In an extraordinary rebuke over police brutality, India’s chief justice has said the most dangerous places in the country for threats to human rights are police stations. Nuthalapati Ramana said that rather than being the safest places, “the threat to human rights and bodily integrity are the highest in police stations”. “Custodial torture and other police atrocities are problems which still prevail in our society,” he told the National Legal Services Authority in a speech in Delhi. He added that the poor bore the brunt of police brutality, but “going by recent reports, even the privileged are not spared third-degree treatment”. One of the causes of police misconduct, he said, was that when brought in for questioning or arrested most Indians had no lawyer to represent them, leaving them at the mercy of corrupt officers. The law provides for free legal representation to people who cannot afford to hire a lawyer, but many poor Indians are unaware of this right. “The lack of effective legal representation at police stations is a huge detriment to arrested or detained persons. The decisions taken in these early hours will later determine the ability of the accused to defend himself,” Ramana said. To many Indians the chief justice’s words will not be a revelation. The slogan of Delhi police, “For you, with you, always”, is often rephrased as “never for you, never with you and never will be for you” by residents who have come to associate police stations with fear and abuse. The government said last week that 348 people died and 1,189 were tortured in police custody over the last three years. Ramana urged the National Legal Services Authority, which is meant to ensure free legal advice is provided to the poor and marginalised, to do more to make the public and police aware of their rights. He suggested putting up large hoardings outside police stations so that, on entering, people could see at a glance that they had a right to a lawyer, and that the postal service be employed to distribute information to people in the countryside. Ramana “sharply and unambiguously” stressing that the police continue to use violence and torture is “extremely significant”, according to the lawyer and human rights activist Vrinda Grover. She said the key to stopping these violations, in addition to providing a lawyer, was to prosecute and punish guilty police officers, which she said currently did not happen as the government refused to sanction criminal prosecution of the police. “Accountability through the judicial process and punishment of offending policemen alone will create a deterrent and make police stations a refuge for victims rather than sites of custodial violence,” she said.