New Delhi (NVI): Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan today affirmed that the spread of COVID-19 has been contained in the country, citing that containment strategy has been successful in states.
While addressing a virtual meeting with WHO’s regional directors for South East Asia (SEA), Harsh Vardhan mentioned the efficacy of the government’s containment strategy.
He stated that, “The strategy has been successful in a way that 50 per cent of the cases are from three States and 32 per cent of the rest are from seven states. The spread of the virus thus has been contained.”
Meanwhile, on the efficacy of the lockdown, Vardhan said, it was effective in slowing down the rate of growth of cases and gave the government time to augment the health infrastructure and testing facilities.
He added that “From one lab in January this year to 1,370 labs today the citizens anywhere can access a lab within three hours travel time. Thirty-three of the 36 states and UTs exceed WHO’s recommendation of testing 140 people per million per day.”
The minister also highlighted that India had been preparing for the pandemic as soon as China informed WHO on January 7.
He also stressed that earlier viral outbreaks like the Avian Influenza, H1N1pdm09 Influenza, Zika and Nipah had provided institutional memory in designing containment and management strategies.
“India’s proactive and graded multi-level institutional response to COVID made it possible to have very low cases per million and deaths per million in spite of having a high population density and low fractional GDP spending and per capita doctor and hospital bed availability as compared to other developed countries,” he pointed out.
The minister further stated that, telemedicine facilities at AIIMS Delhi helped identify the root causes of mortality and made high-impact interventions possible that significantly curbed the mortality rate from 3.33 per cent on June 18 to 2.11 per cent on August 3.
“Within a record 10 days, with the help of DRDO, we were capable of housing 1,000 patients, with an additional 100 ICU beds. Right now, on evaluation, we find that the daily handling capacity of COVID-19 cases in our hospitals has increased,” he added.
However, the meeting focused on maintaining essential health services and public health programmes in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.
-RJV
