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New Delhi : Union Health & Family Welfare Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan on October 13, 2020, chaired the 21th meeting of the high-level Group of Ministers (GoM) on COVID-19 through video-conference here.
He was joined by Dr S Jaishankar, External Affairs Minister, and Hardeep S Puri, Minister of Civil Aviation. Mansukh Lal Mandaviya, Minister of State, Shipping (Independent Charge), Chemicals and Fertilisers, Ashwini Kumar Choubey, Minister of State, Health & Family Welfare, and Dr Vinod K Paul, Member (Health), NITI Aayog, joined virtually.
At the outset, Dr Vardhan said, “With 62,27,295 recovered cases, India has the highest recovery rate of 86.78% in the world. Fatality Rate of 1.53% is the lowest in the world and we are reporting the three-days Doubling Time has been successfully raised to 74.9 days. A total of 1,927 labs at present have led to an upsurge in testing. India’s testing capacity has been hiked to 1.5 million tests per day. Close to 11 lakh samples were tested in the last 24 hours.”
The Union Health Minister and Chairperson of the GOM reiterated his concern and appeal to everyone regarding observance of COVID appropriate behaviour during the forthcoming festival season and the winter months, when the likelihood of an increase in the disease is high. “The Prime Minister has launched the countrywide Jan Andolan to encourage people to adopt and encourage COVID appropriate behaviours to curb spread of the diseases while celebrating the festivals,” he stated, according to a PIB release.
Dr. Sujeet K Singh, Director (NCDC), presented a detailed report on how the data driven graded government policies have helped India achieve a significant control over the pandemic. He informed that Dadar and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu have the highest recovery rate of 96.25% in India followed by A&N Islands (93.98%) and Bihar(93.89%). Kerala has the lowest recovery rate of 66.31% because of the huge surge in number of cases in the recent days.
Through a detailed presentation, Dr. Vinod K Paul, NITI Aayog, apprised the GoM of the process of COVID vaccine development in India and around the world. He presented a comprehensive study on the priority sections of the population that would have initial access to the vaccine drawing upon recommendations of Centre for Disease Control (CDC), USA, and the WHO.
The eVIN network, which can track the latest vaccine stock position, temperature at storage facility, geo-tag Health Centres, and maintenance facility level dashboard is being repurposed for the delivery of COVID Vaccine. He apprised everyone present that the listing of Healthcare Workers (HCWs) would be complete by the end of October or early November while the task of identifying frontline workers, recalibration of digital platform, cold chain augmentation are being carried out as per the detailed implementation plan.
Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan stressed on the need to observe the trajectory of the disease in key states of Kerala, Karnataka, West Bengal, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, which have recently exhibited a surge in cases.