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
US President Donald Trump’s Covid-19 infection and the treatment he is receiving is a good opportunity to revisit the science behind some aspects of the viral disease and the therapies and drugs used to treat it.
Updated on Oct 06, 2020 05:01 AM IST
Hindustan Times, New Delhi | R Sukumar
Covid-19: What you need to know today
There’s a theory doing the rounds that because rapid antigen tests recognise only moderate to high viral loads, they identify the truly infectious patients — a completely misguided and dangerous theory.
Updated on Oct 05, 2020 07:09 AM IST
Hindustan Times, New Delhi | R Sukumar
Covid-19: What you need to know today
All lives, even ordinary ones, are extraordinary in their own way – and not just to the family and friends of the deceased. Each of the 100,000 is a life lost – and each (it’s important to acknowledge this because of our fatalism) could have been saved.
Updated on Oct 03, 2020 03:35 AM IST
Hindustan Times, New Delhi | R Sukumar
Covid-19: What you need to know today
Around one in 12 people infected by the disease has a chance of becoming a superspreader.
Updated on Oct 02, 2020 03:04 AM IST
Hindustan Times, New Delhi | R Sukumar
Covid-19: What you need to know today
As countries around the world have opened up, are opening up even more, or not locking down despite a surge in cases, Sweden’s strategy is being examined again, and finding several endorsers.
Updated on Oct 01, 2020 06:19 AM IST
Hindustan Times, New Delhi | R Sukumar
Covid-19: What you need to know today
India accounts for 6.14 million of the 33.38 million cases of coronavirus disease the world has seen, or 18.41% of total cases, according to Johns Hopkins.
Updated on Sep 30, 2020 05:07 AM IST
Hindustan Times, New Delhi | R Sukumar
Not being risk-averse in face of Covid-19 crisis: FM Nirmala Sitharaman
Nirmala Sitharaman said that while the decline in GDP in the first quarter of 2020-21, at 23.9%, has been substantial, she does not want to conclude anything about the entire year’s number just yet.
Updated on Sep 29, 2020 04:58 AM IST
Hindustan Times, New Delhi | R Sukumar
Open to one more stimulus if necessary: Nirmala Sitharaman
Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman said some industries have told her that domestic demand is increasing and they are also seeing export orders increasing faster than their expectations.
Updated on Sep 29, 2020 03:12 AM IST
Hindustan Times, New Delhi | R Sukumar
Covid-19: What you need to know today
India’s apex medical research body ICMR and the Union health ministry need to investigate why data for the past few weeks has been inconsistent — not tout Covid-19 recovery percentages as a sign of success.
Updated on Sep 28, 2020 05:06 AM IST
Hindustan Times, New Delhi | R Sukumar
Covid-19: What you need to know today
In early September, it looked like it would only be a matter of days before India saw at least 100,000 daily new cases of Covid-19, but that hasn’t happened (which is definitely cause for some cheer).
Updated on Sep 26, 2020 09:04 AM IST
Hindustan Times, New Delhi | R Sukumar
Covid-19: What you need to know today
All four companies — Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca, and Johnson & Johnson — are also signatories to a pledge to ensure “high ethical standards and sound scientific principles”, and to not seek regulatory approval for their vaccines till clinical trials on tens of thousands of individuals show them (the vaccines) to be effective and safe.
Updated on Sep 25, 2020 02:40 AM IST
Hindustan Times, New Delhi | R Sukumar
Covid-19: What you need to know today
The lockdown lasted 68 days, till May 31; a few establishments and activities were allowed to restart even in this period. Since June 1, there have been four sets of guidelines issued by the home ministry, Unlock 1.0 through Unlock 4.0, each detailing a new dimension of opening up.
Updated on Sep 24, 2020 02:48 AM IST
Hindustan Times, New Delhi | R Sukumar
Covid-19: What you need to know today
Covax is a work-in-progress, and is yet to raise the money it needs to pay for or subsidise the vaccines for lower-income countries.
Updated on Sep 23, 2020 04:28 AM IST
Hindustan Times, New Delhi | R Sukumar
Covid-19: What you need to know today
The CDC’s new guidelines-that-weren’t clearly pointed to the heightened risk of indoor transmission, especially in shared rooms, but also in open offices with poor air conditioning and bad ventilation.
Updated on Sep 22, 2020 09:33 AM IST
Hindustan Times, New Delhi | R Sukumar
Covid-19: What we need to know today
Not too long ago, in spring, many of us (including this writer) were hoping that warm weather would prove unfavourable for the spread of the virus.
Updated on Sep 21, 2020 03:14 AM IST
Hindustan Times, New Delhi | R Sukumar
Covid-19: What you need to know today
The world is pinning its hopes on a vaccine. Sure, cases are down in the US and Brazil, two of the top three countries in terms of case count (both have seen a slight spike upwards in the past week, though), but they continue to rise in India (which is #2 in terms of cases).
Published on Sep 19, 2020 12:59 AM IST
Hindustan Times, New Delhi | R Sukumar
Covid-19: What you need to know today
It isn’t clear why Maharashtra has been ravaged by the disease. Sure, Mumbai, India’s commercial capital, has among the highest population densities in the world, as also some of the largest slums, but many of Maharashtra’s social and health metrics are better than those of the so-called BIMARU states.
Updated on Sep 18, 2020 12:53 AM IST
Hindustan Times, New Delhi | R Sukumar
Covid-19: What you need to know today
Dr Li-Meng Yan, currently in the US, where she fled to in late April, is a virologist who used to work at the University of Hong Kong School of Public Health, and who has for long claimed that China knew of the virus and the fact that human-to-human transmission of the infection was happening, long before it let on.
Updated on Sep 17, 2020 04:55 AM IST
Hindustan Times, New Delhi | R Sukumar
Covid-19: What you need to know today
Delhi’s administrators, who continue to rely overly on antigen tests (last week, these accounted for 83% of the total 397,722 tests conducted), couldn’t have asked for a better demonstration of their (the tests’) inaccuracy, and how the erroneous results could, in turn, have cascading implications.
Updated on Sep 16, 2020 07:10 AM IST
Hindustan Times, New Delhi | R Sukumar
Covid-19: What you need to know today
The study, whose headline results were reported in June (by the HT newsroom and a few others) showed a prevalence of 0.73% among adults, translating into around 6.5 million infections. This number isn’t cause for alarm as some suggest.
Updated on Sep 15, 2020 01:27 AM IST
Hindustan Times, New Delhi | R Sukumar
Covid-19: What you need to know today
There are some who naively believe that everything will return to the way it was once a vaccine is discovered and becomes widely available. That is not going to be.
Updated on Sep 14, 2020 12:56 PM IST
Hindustan Times, New Delhi | R Sukumar
Covid-19: What you need to know today
Many rapid antigen tests are inaccurate when it comes to so-called false negatives. In plain English, this means they show infected individuals as uninfected.
Updated on Sep 12, 2020 05:49 AM IST
Hindustan Times, New Delhi | R Sukumar
Covid-19: What you need to know today
Globally, the infection seems to be slowing — that could change if the second wave gathers momentum in Europe, and the US sees a third wave (it likely will) — with the number of cases growing by just 9.2% in August, compared to 64% in July. The number of cases in India in August grew 75%, compared to 183% in July.
Updated on Sep 11, 2020 08:20 AM IST
Hindustan Times, New Delhi | R Sukumar
Covid-19: What you need to know today
India is now adding more cases a day (even when a seven-day average is taken) than any other country — more cases a day than China has seen in the entire run of the disease.
Updated on Sep 10, 2020 07:16 AM IST
Hindustan Times, New Delhi | R Sukumar
Covid-19: What you need to know today
The Covid-19 pandemic is now in its seventh month in India. A 68-day long lockdown (albeit, with some relaxations after three weeks) was imposed when the country had a few hundred cases.
Updated on Sep 09, 2020 01:05 AM IST
Hindustan Times, New Delhi | R Sukumar
Covid-19: What you need to know today
IFR is an important metric because it accurately measures the possible fatalities arising from a disease — and also the chances of dying from it. Measuring it, though, requires knowing the denominator — the number of infected people in a population.
Updated on Sep 08, 2020 06:35 AM IST
Hindustan Times, New Delhi | R Sukumar
Covid-19: What you need to know today
As testing increases, India could see a further rise in cases. Purely in terms of the trajectory of the pandemic’s run, India is unique — but it isn’t the kind of distinctiveness of which the country can be proud.
Updated on Sep 07, 2020 07:56 AM IST
Hindustan Times, New Delhi | R Sukumar
Covid-19: What you need to know today
A week from now, perhaps a day earlier or a few days later, India will have a million active cases of the coronavirus disease.
Updated on Sep 05, 2020 07:04 AM IST
Hindustan Times, New Delhi | R Sukumar
Covid-19: What you need to know today
According to this study, by researchers from the US and China, 23 of 67 passengers who took a round trip lasting 100 minutes by bus (in January, in Zhejiang in Eastern China) to attend a 150-minute event were infected by the 68th passenger on the bus (who was unaware about being infected).
Updated on Sep 04, 2020 07:43 AM IST
Hindustan Times, New Delhi | R Sukumar
Covid-19: What you need to know today
While on the matter of fatality rates, all countries have managed to progressively reduce them as health care workers figure out more therapies that work.
Updated on Sep 03, 2020 02:28 AM IST
Hindustan Times, New Delhi | R Sukumar