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
India hasn’t put out in the public domain details of the number of viral genomes it has sequenced from Covid patients, but this writer learns that this number is just around a few thousand, and also that the number of cases sequenced since October is next to nothing.
Updated on Dec 24, 2020 05:08 AM IST
Hindustan Times, New Delhi | R Sukumar
Covid-19: What you need to know today
Indian health officials insisted at a briefing on Tuesday that the new strain hasn’t been spotted in India, but this is one of those statements that is economical with the truth.
Updated on Dec 23, 2020 04:53 AM IST
Hindustan Times | R Sukumar
Covid-19: What you need to know today
Between the time I wrote Dispatch 229 on Sunday and the time I am writing this, scientists have figured out even more about this strain, and the bad news would appear to be that, at least in a laboratory setting, it is more infective than the older strain.
Updated on Dec 22, 2020 04:57 AM IST
Hindustan Times, New Delhi | R Sukumar
Covid-19: What you need to know today
The UK is now seeing its third wave of infections — or, a second wave which appeared to be waning till it suddenly gathered momentum — with the country recording around 35,000 new infections on December 17, the highest in one day.
Updated on Dec 21, 2020 04:59 AM IST
Hindustan Times, New Delhi | R Sukumar
Covid-19: What you need to know today
India remains among the 10 most affected countries currently, according to data from the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. And it is among the six countries in this list where the average of daily cases is trending down.
Updated on Dec 18, 2020 05:09 AM IST
Hindustan Times, New Delhi | R Sukumar
Covid-19: What you need to know today
While the Pfizer vaccine awaits regulatory clearance in India, it is likely that most Indians will not receive it.
Updated on Dec 17, 2020 05:09 AM IST
Hindustan Times, New Delhi | R Sukumar
Covid-19: What you need to know today
India saw 352 deaths from Covid-19 on Monday. The last Monday on which it saw fewer deaths was back on June 22 (311 deaths).
Updated on Dec 16, 2020 05:07 AM IST
Hindustan Times, New Delhi | R Sukumar
Covid-19: What you need to know today
We may have come up with vaccines that effectively prevent Covid-19, but we are still learning about the disease.
Updated on Dec 15, 2020 05:08 AM IST
Hindustan Times, New Delhi | R Sukumar
Covid-19: What you need to know today
In every country in the world, events and gatherings— from parties to a large motorcycle rally to even a biotech conference — have all been super-spreader events. Yet, over the past two months, India has bucked the trend.
Updated on Dec 14, 2020 02:18 AM IST
Hindustan Times, New Delhi | R Sukumar
Covid-19: What you need to know today
It is important to note that SEC doesn’t approve vaccines, as some have suggested. It just recommends a course of action after looking at the data on hand.
Updated on Dec 11, 2020 02:06 AM IST
Hindustan Times, New Delhi | R Sukumar
‘We may be back to normal in 2022’: Bill Gates
The conversation ranged from the development of vaccines to the stuttering progress of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance’s Covax programme, which aims to ensure Covid-19 vaccines are accessible and affordable for poor countries, to the timing of the world’s return to normalcy.
Updated on Dec 11, 2020 10:30 AM IST
Hindustan Times, New Delhi | R Sukumar
Covid-19: What you need to know today
Neither Moderna, nor Pfizer/BioNTech has published a peer-reviewed paper on the findings of the Phase 3 trials of their vaccines.
Updated on Dec 10, 2020 07:11 AM IST
Hindustan Times, New Delhi | R Sukumar
Covid-19: What you need to know today
It has been a year and 10 days between the first published account of the strange illness in Wuhan, China, and the administration of a vaccine that has cleared Phase 3 trials to a member of the general population, so the authors of that article got that right. But they got the drugs bit completely wrong.
Updated on Dec 09, 2020 05:05 AM IST
Hindustan Times, New Delhi | R Sukumar
Covid-19: What you need to know today
Companies that were pioneers in outsourcing work to India – and tech firms are on top of this list by a long distance – are figuring out that if they are anyway going to move to remote working for many of their employees, then they might as well – provided the right kind of people are available – move those jobs in India, where they could be remote, or not.
Updated on Dec 08, 2020 05:02 AM IST
Hindustan Times, New Delhi | R Sukumar
Covid-19: What you need to know today
Daily case numbers through the first six days of last week, Monday to Saturday, were: 31,182; 36,421; 35,414; 36,653; 36,212; and 36,439. That works out to a six-day average of 35,387. All these numbers are from the HT dashboard. The average is the lowest India has seen in four-and-a-half months.
Updated on Dec 07, 2020 05:04 AM IST
Hindustan Times, New Delhi | R Sukumar
Covid-19: What you need to know today
The US registered 2,760 deaths on Wednesday, according to the New York Times. This is the highest daily death toll in the country since the beginning of the pandemic (caveat: just like the death toll on any other day, this does not mean 2,760 people died from Covid-19 on Wednesday, just that their deaths were recorded on that day).
Updated on Dec 04, 2020 04:59 AM IST
Hindustan Times, New Delhi | R Sukumar
Covid-19: What you need to know today
The UK, which has a patchy record in managing the coronavirus disease — it was, after all, the first country to decide to bank on herd immunity before it realised the folly of the approach — became the third country (after China and Russia) and the first Western one to approve a vaccine for Covid-19.
Updated on Dec 03, 2020 01:32 AM IST
Hindustan Times, New Delhi | R Sukumar
Covid-19: What you need to know today
India has seen almost 9.5 million cases of the coronavirus disease to date (it is second in terms of the number of cases after the US).
Updated on Dec 02, 2020 05:52 AM IST
Hindustan Times, New Delhi | R Sukumar
Covid-19: What you need to know today
India has prioritised agricultural and industrial activities, political activities (replete with large-scale public meetings and rallies), and recreational activities.
Updated on Dec 01, 2020 03:11 AM IST
Hindustan Times, New Delhi | R Sukumar
Covid-19: What you need to know today
On Saturday, the country registered 41,799 cases, according to the HT dashboard. It conducted almost 1.24 million tests. To date, India has conducted almost 150 million tests. That’s around 115,000 tests per million of population.
Updated on Nov 30, 2020 04:50 AM IST
Hindustan Times, New Delhi | R Sukumar
Covid-19: What you need to know today
The coronavirus disease has resulted in huge public interest in a process that is usually restricted to the research departments of pharma companies, laboratories and research institutions, and peer-reviewed academic journals with readership in the thousands (or tens of thousands).
Updated on Nov 27, 2020 05:38 AM IST
Hindustan Times, New Delhi | R Sukumar
Covid-19: What you need to know today
There are clear signs of a second wave — there have been, for some time — but the week starting November 30 will decide how rapidly this gathers momentum.
Updated on Nov 26, 2020 01:18 AM IST
Hindustan Times, New Delhi | R Sukumar
Covid-19: What you need to know today
India’s overall seven-day average of daily cases has also inched up from the 39,000-levels seen last week, and was 43,379 on Monday. That’s still lower than the 66,396 it was on October 15.
Updated on Nov 25, 2020 01:28 AM IST
Hindustan Times, New Delhi | R Sukumar
Covid-19: What you need to know today
Coronaviruses are family of RNA viruses (coronaviridae) that are known to cause diseases in humans, other mammals, and birds.
Updated on Nov 24, 2020 02:01 AM IST
Hindustan Times, New Delhi | R Sukumar
Covid-19: What you need to know today
Friday was an important day in the world’s fight against Covid-19. The day saw an informal meeting of the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Council to discuss a proposal made by India and South Africa in October, and which has since been supported by around 100 other countries
Updated on Nov 21, 2020 05:10 AM IST
Hindustan Times, New Delhi | R Sukumar
Covid-19: What you need to know today
India’s approach to schooling during the pandemic has been very different from that of most other countries. In Europe and the US (and even Australia), the emphasis has been on keeping schools open as long as possible.
Updated on Nov 20, 2020 05:03 AM IST
Hindustan Times, New Delhi | R Sukumar
Covid-19: What you need to know today
Accurate, inexpensive, rapid tests hold the key to getting the pandemic under control. Accurate, inexpensive, rapid, home tests are even better. RT-LAMP tests aren’t based on some new breakthrough technology, though.
Updated on Nov 19, 2020 07:11 AM IST
Hindustan Times, New Delhi | R Sukumar
Covid-19: What you need to know today
On Monday, India recorded 27,968 cases of Covid-19, according to the HT dashboard. Recorded cases typically lag tests by a day, so some credit for the low number of cases should go to the corresponding low number of tests conducted on Sunday (735,551; as compared to an average of 1,098,200 every weekday last week).
Updated on Nov 18, 2020 04:54 AM IST
Hindustan Times, New Delhi | R Sukumar
A tipping point in the fight against Covid-19
Pfizer will make 50 million doses available this year (once approved) and Moderna, 20 million. Both are two-dose vaccines which means 25 million and 10 million people, respectively, can be vaccinated. Next year, Pfizer plans to boost production up to 1.3 billion units, and Moderna up to between 500 million and a billion.
Updated on Nov 17, 2020 02:49 AM IST
Hindustan Times, New Delhi | R Sukumar
Covid-19: What you need to know today
The trajectory of Covid-19 in Delhi is different from that of any other Indian state or Union territory. No other Indian region has seen a clear second wave (many have just seen the end of the first).
Published on Nov 17, 2020 12:13 AM IST
Hindustan Times, New Delhi | R Sukumar