Before the pandemic, Prime Minister Narendra Modi famously claimed that the 21st century would belong to India.
Over 270 million Indians were hauled out of poverty between 2005 and 2015, according to @UNDP
However, the second wave of Covid has brought the country to its knees, leading to record levels of unemployment, while exposing decades of underinvestment in key public services, most notably healthcare and education
An estimated 2.4 million Indians have lost their lives to Covid-19.
Infections are finally starting to subside but almost every family is grieving for a loved one
In April 2020 alone 120 million Indians lost their jobs, according to the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy.
And this has barely improved since. The worst-hit has been India’s lower and middle urban classes who are almost entirely dependent on daily earnings
Unable to earn, 230 million Indians have been pushed back into poverty since the beginning of the pandemic, according to a report by Azim Premji University.
And activists believe this will force millions of children to drop out of education to work to support their families
Girls are set to be hit the hardest, they say.
And there are fears there will be a resurgence of outdated practices such as bonded labour, child labour, human trafficking and child marriage
While some experts believe the Covid crisis will force a societal reckoning in India. Others believe the road ahead is much more uncertain…
Globally, motorbike crashes kill around 380,000 people annually, according to the WHO’s Global Road Safety Status Report from 2018.
Young people are particularly badly affected: road traffic deaths are the leading cause of death among five to 29 year olds around the world
The dangers are even more acute in countries where bikes have boomed in recent decades: in Thailand and Laos, for example, motorbikes are involved in an astonishing 74% of fatal accidents
We have the right technology to extinguish the next pandemic threat within a decade – but politicians have to unite and channel resources into three main areas:
The variant - a strain of the original delta variant that led to India's devastating second wave - contains a mutation that was also present in the South African or beta variant.
This mutation - K417N - was also present in beta, against which some vaccines were less effective
So far more than 40 cases of the 'delta plus' variant have been found across seven Indian states.
While this strain was classified as a variant of concern on Tuesday by India’s state-run genome sequencing consortium, INSACOG, scientists there said the move was precautionary
China has now jabbed the equivalent of around a sixth of the world's population.
In other words, of the 2.7 billion doses that have been administered around the world, more than a third have been given in the communist nation
This is a sharp increase from a couple of months ago.
In April, China gave out around five million doses a day. Two months later, this has risen to around 20 million – the equivalent of jabbing almost a third of the UK’s population every single day
"Africa is in the midst of a full-blown third wave," @MoetiTshidi said. "The sobering trajectory of surging cases should draw everyone to urgent action.
“We've seen, in India and elsewhere, how quickly Covid-19 can rebound and overwhelm health systems" telegraph.co.uk/global-health/…
In total, the vast continent has seen five million Covid cases since the pandemic began, and 156,000 deaths.
For context, Europe - with 748 million people - has seen almost 33 million cases, and 730,000 deaths.
But experts worry Africa's caseload could be vastly underreported
💉German pharmaceutical company CureVac has blamed the emergence of new variants for disappointing results of its Covid vaccine telegraph.co.uk/global-health/…
Interim phase two/three results showed that the vaccine, based on mRNA technology, was only 47% - below the 50% threshold required by the @WHO
The disappointing results will come as a blow to countries that have put in advance orders on the vaccine at a time when jabs are in short supply globally and new variants mean booster shots may be required