The ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, starting in China in late 2019, has spread to every corner of the world, and thrown up several important ethical challenges. The rising numbers of infected persons and of death rates are keeping the health systems of most countries on their toes. However, the heightened focus on infection prevention and control have left several aspects of peoples' social life unaddressed. The stringent lockdowns in many countries including India, the mandatory public health measures, such as quarantine, isolation and contact tracing, have left a deep impact on the lives of the people.The Covid-19 pandemic has been a leveller of sorts; across communities, cities, and countries. All healthcare workers are doing their best beyond the call of duty. With many patients recovering and others succumbing every day, they are facing extreme situations. Sometimes, both the good and the bad occur within in a matter of minutes which can be emotionally exhausting. A single Covid-19 test report whether positive or negative has many implications, the rest depends on the healthcare staff who diagnose, treat and more importantly, convey the diagnosis to the patients. Here is an experience of what healthcare workers face and how they handle it. Brave are those who still hold on to their grit and spirit.In this commentary, I contend that in a context marked by a slow but steady rise in sexual liberalism around the ideals of female sexuality and desire, the pressure to remain virginal is manifested through a potent nexus of markets and moral economies associated with gender and intimacy. Drawing on qualitative interviews with surgeons specialising in female genital aesthetic surgeries, particularly hymenoplasty, in New Delhi, Ahmedabad, and Bangalore, I show how restorative cosmetic surgeries on healthy bodies are proffered through the language of duty, autonomous choice, and the (neoliberal) market. Further, building on the sociological concepts of "moral consumption" and "progress through pleasure", I show how consumerism-led modernity makes pleasure a 'biopolitical burden', and the cosmetic industry, a regulatory vehicle, disciplining female sexuality to conform with male honour codes. I question what this holds for the sexual and reproductive health politics of young people in India, in a context marked by pervasive asymmetries of socialisation, gender relations, and sexual experience. I conclude with a call to unsettle the social-moral ideals around female sexuality and to rethink the medical-legal frameworks around the cosmetic industry so that young people are not unwittingly co-opted into its production of ideal, patriarchal subjects.The government of India imposed a strict nationwide lockdown on March 24, 2020, to arrest the spread of Covid-19 (1). Abiding by the government regulations, several educational institutions including those in healthcare, postponed or cancelled several academic activities to curb the spread of the virus (2). Considering the high risk of infection transmission, several academic research projects involving human participants were paused. This has posed serious challenges in managing academic tasks such as teaching and learning activities related to research, participant examination and follow-up, field work for data collection, face-to-face discussion with colleagues, students and supervisors. https://www.selleckchem.com/products/zongertinib.html Many academic healthcare research activities involve human subjects as research participants; but because of the lockdown, final year post-graduate students may not be able to complete their research projects within the stipulated time frame. Healthcare students are in a vulnerable situation because of the pressure to submit their research projects for the successful completion of the courses. Given this situation, it is probable that students may resort to unethical or fraudulent research activities such as data manipulation or fabrication to complete their research projects before the existing deadline. Such research, if published in the future, can damage the credibility and validity of the scientific evidence..Thanks to an impressive R&D effort, three vaccines for Covid-19 have been conditionally approved by stringent regulators as of February 2021, and sixteen have entered the WHO evaluation process. However, they all need to keep on being evaluated in clinical trials. The WHO Ad Hoc Expert Group on the Next Steps for Covid-19 Vaccine suggested that countries with limited or no access to an effective vaccine could ethically permit placebo-controlled trials, even if effective vaccines were already being marketed elsewhere. Here, I argue that inclusion in a placebo-controlled trial is ethically sound for those who would be in any case ineligible for vaccination outside the trial, and as long as the access to the vaccine outside the trial depends on a transparent and just allocation framework. Conversely, carrying out placebo-controlled studies in countries where vaccines are not (or are insufficiently) available because of unequal global allocation, would be unethical, as an ethical strategy cannot be built on an unethical premise.A World Health Organization (WHO) Ad Hoc Expert Group on the Next Steps for Covid-19 Vaccine Evaluation recently recommended placebo-controlled trials (PCT) of Covid-19 vaccines. PCTs are ethically acceptable when there is no proven effective and safe treatment for a certain condition. However, there are already some vaccines that have been approved and which have high levels of efficacy and safety. Any new vaccine under development must be tested against the most effective vaccines available. PCTs go against the participants' best interests, by putting them in a position of disadvantage while taking part in a trial, compared with people who are not in the trial and who could get vaccinated. Particularly in high-income countries, many people are getting vaccinated. This means that, following a recent trend in clinical trials, PCTs would have to be conducted in low- and middle-income countries, where there a number of advantages for drug companies, but where fatality rates of Covid-19 are, in many cases, much higher.