As we know due to the coronavirus Mumbai has been put under lockdown to contain the virus and prevent it from spreading. Although recent reports state that urban jobs have increased by 35%, in July on the 19th it shot up to 35.1% after it is comparatively low in April. The overall employment rate increased to show that the labour market is now partially in force the Central for Monitoring Indian Economy said. Many of the workers that got employed include maids, cooks, drivers, cleaners, and many others to help families since they cannot do all the work themselves and to receive money to support their families. Although many of these services have been approved with restrictions of course overall, the employment is gradually returning to where it was before this pandemic.
The government has started giving approval to many different pharmaceutical companies in India to manufacture the raw materials and finished product of the antiviral developed in Japan (Favipir). The price of this Japanese drug has slashed their prices continuously and is still said to reduce over the next week due to these Indian pharmaceutical companies coming up with their own drug to beat this virus, and now the competition has increased. Due to the government giving their approval, over the next week close to 10 drug companies are said to release their own version of Favipir despite there being no evidence to prove its effectiveness. Many companies are providing it at cheap prices causing so much competition and a price war in our economy. Along with hospitals now continuing to slash prices for COVID and non-COVID cases till November in the hope, it will settle down then.
Due to this increase in the amount of testing being conducted COVID cases have increased to 49,310 in the last 24 hours and the positivity rate was recorded between 10.6% to 13% in the last fortnight and government officials saying it was due to increased testing but is likely to plateau in the next few days. More than 1.5 crore samples have been tested until now coming up to 11,179.83 tests per million for India. This really cannot be controlled and according to a senior official, this increase is good because cases are getting detected which means they can identify and isolate positive cases while also providing treatment.
Despite these consequences, the government continues to plan on going forward with aggressive testing till positivity rate comes down to 10% and then hope that that percentage is maintained for a prolonged period of time till positivity rates then continue to decrease to 5% as per WHO recommendations. Were not sure about the decrease in positive cases but that’s a question on everyone’s mind right now, we are going to have to see what the government and the future have in store for us.
Writer: Anaya Parekh
29/07/2020
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