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The economist August 19, 2020 MILLIONS MORE are going to die before the covid-19 pandemic is over. That is the stark message of Bill Gates, a co-founder of Microsoft and one of the world’s largest philanthropists via the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, in an interview with Zanny Minton Beddoes,  The Economist ’s editor-in-chief, in early August. Most of these deaths, he said, would be caused not by the disease itself, but by the further strain on health-care systems and economies that were already struggling. He also lamented the politicisation of the response to the virus in America, and the spread of conspiracy theories—some implicating him—both of which have slowed efforts to contain the disease’s spread. But he offered reasons for hope in the medium term, predicting that by the end of 2021 a reasonably effective vaccine would be in mass production, and a large enough share of the world’s population would be immunised to halt the pandemic in its tracks. Mr Gates...

The Wire July 03, 2020 Bangalore: July 2 turned out to be an unexpectedly tumultuous day for the Indian medical community. Director general of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) Balram Bhargava sent a letter to various institutions around the country asking them to begin human clinical trials for a COVID-19 vaccine named COVAXIN, to be manufactured by Hyderabad-based drugmaker Bharat Biotech (BB). BB had announced on June 29 via a press release that it had received permission from the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) to begin these trials, as well as touted a claim that COVAXIN was India’s first indigenous COVID-19 vaccine. In his July 2 letter, Dr Bhargava urged the institutions – specifically, 13 hospitals and research centres around the country – to begin enrolling participants for the clinical trial no later than July 7, and to have the vaccine ready for “public health use”, which presumably means use by doctors, by August 15. This was by all st...