India rapidly losing scribes to Covid-19, global tally reaches 1175

Geneva/ Guwahati : 24 April 2021: India is fast losing working
journalists to Covid-19 and crosses 100 mark till date where the
global tally hits 1175 scribes in 76 countries. The country lately
starts losing three journalists every day. Brazil continues to be the
worst affected country with 181 media corona-casualties followed by
Peru (140) and Mexico (106), stated the Switzerland based media rights
& safety body Press Emblem Campaign (PEC).
India, which witnessed the death of nine journalists due to novel
corona virus infection aggravated ailments in the last three days, is
just behind of Mexico with 101 casualties since the pandemic broke out
in March 2020. The nation with a billion plus populace comes far ahead
of  Italy (52 dead), Bangladesh (51), USA (47), Colombia (47), Ecuador
(46), United Kingdom (28), Dominican Republic (27), Pakistan (25),
Turkey (22), Iran (21), etc.
Expressing apprehensions that the situation may worsen for the safety
of journalists on the ground due to the corona-pandemic, Blaise
Lempen, general secretary of PEC  (www.pressemblem.ch/pec-news.shtml),
advocates for adequate compensations to the victim families. He also
emphasizes on early vaccinations to media workers so that they can
perform their duties as corona warriors after the doctors, nurses,
sanitation workers, etc without endangering their lives.
Even after the launch of a massive corona-vaccination program covering
around 13 million Indian citizens India till now in the backdrop of
around three million reported infections every day mounting its
cumulative Covid-19 cases to over 16 million (total casualty crosses
190,000).
Reported names of recent corona-victims include Shailesh Raval
(Gujarat), Sopan Bongane, Ashok Tupe, Motichand Bedmutha
(Maharashtra), P Tataiah, Chandrashekar Naidu, Srinivasa Rao (Andhra
Pradesh),  Ashish Yechury, Chanchal Pal Chauhan (New Delhi), Chinta
Naga Raju, Ramachandra Rao (Telangana), Govind Behera, Manoj Kumar
Sahu, Karunakar Sahu, Naresh Behera (Odisha), Jodu Chutia (Assam),
etc.
“India has the probability to increase the number of media
corona-victims as a  number of States went on under-reporting about
the actual figures because of various reasons,” commented PEC’s
country representative Nava Thakuria adding, in many cases even the
established media houses had not reported about their own
corona-positive cases to avoid unwanted interferences from the
authority under the health protocols.