Covid-19 Cases In India: Amid the surge in the number of Covid-19 cases in India, Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya on Friday held a high-level review meeting. The Minister advised all states to stay alert and asked them to be prepared for COVID-19 management.
The meeting was held with health ministers of different states and principal and additional chief secretaries. In the meeting, which was held virtually, Mandaviya stressed on identifying emergency hotspots. He said that health departments must ramp up testing and monitor trends of influenza-like illness (ILI) and severe acute respiratory infection (SARI) cases. He also advised them to ramp up vaccination and ensure the readiness of all related infrastructure.
“The Centre and the states need to continue working in collaborative spirit as was done during the previous surges for COVID-19 prevention and management,” Mandaviya said.
Conduct mock drills of all hospital infrastructure
He also urged all the states to conduct mock drills of all hospital infrastructure on April 10 and 11 in order to review the preparedness.
States and Union territories were further informed that currently WHO is closely tracking one variant of interest (VOI), XBB.1.5 and six other variants are under monitoring (BQ.1, BA.2.75, CH.1.1, XBB, XBF and XBB.1.16), a health ministry statement said.
The health minister stressed the five-fold strategy of ‘Test-Track-Treat-Vaccinate and adherence to Covid-appropriate behaviour’ and said that it will work irrespective of the new variants.
The Union health minister also advised all Union territories (UTs) and states to ramp up vaccination of all eligible populations. He stressed that the elderly and vulnerable population groups should be given priority.
Mandaviya also underlined the importance of enhancing public awareness campaigns to make sure that people start following Covid-appropriate behaviour. Requesting all the state health ministers to monitor and review the preparedness personally, Mandaviya said that the Covid data should be updated regularly on the Covid India portal.