Sukumar Ranganathan is the Editor-in-Chief of Hindustan Times. He is also a comic-book freak and an amateur birder.
Articles by R Sukumar
Covid-19: What you need to know today
Delhi's fourth wave is ebbing with the same intensity with which it climbed — and one of the main reasons for this is clearly the lockdown.
Updated on May 11, 2021 06:09 AM IST
R Sukumar, Hindustan Times, New Delhi
Covid-19: What you need to know today
Delhi was short of tests, medicines, oxygen, hospital beds, and ventilators. People wanted help with remdesivir and plasma. Both were being prescribed indiscriminately by doctors.
Updated on May 10, 2021 11:50 AM IST
R Sukumar, Hindustan Times, New Delhi
Covid-19: What you need to know today
India needs to resurrect its faltering vaccine drive (which means, most importantly, accepting that it is faltering). It’s the only way to crush the second wave of the pandemic — and prevent (or lessen the impact of) a third wave.
Updated on May 07, 2021 07:46 AM IST
Covid-19: What you need to know today
The first and immediate task is to enhance supplies — by authorising (after due process) more vaccines for emergency use
Updated on May 05, 2021 06:26 AM IST
Covid-19: What you need to know today
At the disaggregated level, there is clearly an effort to show things are better than they actually are.
Updated on May 04, 2021 08:39 AM IST
R Sukumar, New Delhi
Covid-19: What you need to know today
In the absence of reliable, timely, and comprehensive death records, at the local level, aggregating up to the national there has been a lot of speculation, and scientific exploration, some reasoned, others not-so, on the actual number of deaths
Updated on May 03, 2021 07:46 AM IST
Covid-19: What you need to know today
According to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, India is currently one of the two countries (Colombia is the other one) among the 10 worst affected countries (by daily cases) where things are getting worse.
Published on Apr 30, 2021 04:25 AM IST
R Sukumar, New Delhi
Covid-19: What you need to know today
According to worldometers.info, as of Tuesday morning, India had recorded 12,678 cases per million of its population, lower than all but Indonesia in the top 25 countries by total cases.
Updated on Apr 30, 2021 11:44 AM IST
R Sukumar, New Delhi
Covid-19: What you need to know today
Oxygen has emerged as a key constraint in India’s ability to deal with the second wave — and this is important to remember as the country prepares for the third wave, which will break at some point.
Updated on Apr 27, 2021 07:28 AM IST
Covid-19: What really matters
In India, for some time, it looked like the response of the Union and state governments, and also of people, was ideal.
Updated on Apr 26, 2021 06:51 AM IST
R Sukumar, Hindustan Times, New Delhi
Covid-19: What you need to know today
The question everyone is asking is: How long will this last? Surely, India cannot continue to report in excess of 300,000 cases for very long?
Updated on Apr 24, 2021 07:43 AM IST
R Sukumar, Hindustan Times, New Delhi
Covid-19: What you need to know today
Everyone should have themselves vaccinated but not everyone will. The government, the media, non-governmental organisations, and educational institutions, should all work to break this reluctance, which, at least in the next several months when supplies lag, will actually work to India’s advantage.
Updated on Apr 22, 2021 08:15 AM IST
R Sukumar, Hindustan Times, New Delhi
Covid-19: What you need to know today
Among the burning topics of discussion in the international scientific community right now is the nature of behaviour of the strain of the virus with the double mutation (B.1.617) that was first identified in India.
Published on Apr 20, 2021 04:15 AM IST
R Sukumar, Hindustan Times, New Delhi
Covid-19: What you need to know today
Delhi needs to aggressively vaccinate people. A little over two million people have received one dose of a vaccine and around 440,000, both doses.
Updated on Apr 19, 2021 04:57 AM IST
R Sukumar, Hindustan Times, New Delhi
Covid-19: What you need to know today
Scientists and pharma companies did try to find a small molecule cure or preventive for Covid-19, an antiviral which can, preferably, be taken orally — but they did not have much luck.
Updated on Apr 17, 2021 06:15 AM IST
R Sukumar, Hindustan Times, New Delhi
Covid-19: What you need to know today
Based on health ministry’s data, India registered more than 200,000 daily new cases in the 24 hours to Thursday morning, with the actual number likely to be 10 times as high
Updated on Apr 16, 2021 09:58 AM IST
R Sukumar, Hindustan Times, New Delhi
Covid-19: What you need to know today
It’s still important for the government to work with Serum Institute of India and Bharat Biotech on expanding their capacities and it’s even more important for it to come up with a long-term Covid-19 vaccine strategy.
Updated on Apr 14, 2021 10:01 AM IST
R Sukumar, Hindustan Times, New Delhi
Covid-19: What you need to know today
The current weekly average national positivity rate (based on Sunday’s number) is 9.9%, and rising – far higher than the 5% (and declining) level which indicates that things are getting better.
Updated on Apr 14, 2021 01:28 AM IST
What science tells us about Covid-19 vaccines
According to science, immunity sets in around two weeks after the second dose, although research recommends delaying the second dose in the case of the Covishield vaccine (the Indian version of the Oxford/ AstraZeneca vaccine) by 6-8 weeks to maximise immunity.
Updated on Apr 03, 2021 07:10 AM IST
R Sukumar, Hindustan Times, New Delhi
Covid-19: What the next 45 days will mean for India
Maharashtra is driving the second wave, accounting, on some days over the past month, for as much as 65% of India’s daily new case tally.
Updated on Apr 01, 2021 06:24 AM IST
R Sukumar, New Delhi
Talking vaccines, pricing and the future of patents with Cipla’s Yusuf Hamied
20 years ago, amid the AIDS epidemic, he fought the good fight, faced off with Big Pharma and won. HT Editor-in-Chief R Sukumar interviews the 84-year-old scientist, chemist and chairman of Cipla.
Five ways to beat the second wave of Covid-19
The situation today is more alarming than it was a year ago, when India went in for a lockdown. A set of immediate measures is needed
Dispatch X: A columnist looks back
We knew little about coronaviruses (although they weren’t unknown) before the pandemic. We would have known a lot less if not for Sars, which emerged in 2002-03, flared up, and then died out.
Updated on Mar 01, 2021 06:04 AM IST
R Sukumar, New Delhi
Nirmala Sitharaman interview: ‘Important to back asset creation’
In conversation with HT's R Sukumar, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman explained how —via Union Budget for 2021-2022 — the government wanted to give a boost to public expenditure through good quality expenditure for asset creation such as roads, ports, and other infrastructure.
Covid-19: What you need to know today
India’s approval of a vaccine comes even as the seven-day average of daily cases has fallen to 19,828, and the number of active cases in the country is 255,584, the lowest since July 5, according to the HT dashboard.
Updated on Jan 02, 2021 04:53 AM IST
Hindustan Times, New Delhi | R Sukumar
Covid-19: What you need to know today
It was the year of the health care worker. Through the year, around the world, doctors, nurses, paramedics and other health care givers worked around the clock, putting themselves at risk.
Updated on Jan 01, 2021 04:11 AM IST
Hindustan Times, New Delhi | R Sukumar
Covid-19: What you need to know today
The new year will be more about vaccines and vaccination than anything else (even the new strain, which, as expected, has surfaced in more places and people in India).
Updated on Dec 31, 2020 04:46 AM IST
Hindustan Times, New Delhi | R Sukumar
Covid-19: What you need to know today
The new strain is the predominant one in the UK, especially London; there have been 70 flights a week from the UK to India since May; and until last Monday, when it was tightened, the screening process for passengers arriving in India was a sham.
Updated on Dec 30, 2020 06:12 AM IST
Hindustan Times, New Delhi | R Sukumar
Covid-19: What you need to know today
October is one of the unkindest months in India’s commercial capital, with the heat and humidity combining to make it very uncomfortable, and also extremely conducive to the propagation of the diseases named above, but this time, the city seems to have been spared, courtesy an unlikely savior – Covid-19.
Updated on Dec 29, 2020 04:40 AM IST
Hindustan Times, New Delhi | R Sukumar
Covid-19: What you need to know today
Last week, scientists, including some from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine published a study that showed the new variant to be 56% more infective. But there is still no evidence of it causing more severe Covid-19 cases, or resulting in more deaths.
Updated on Dec 28, 2020 05:12 AM IST
Hindustan Times, New Delhi | R. Sukumar