Speed Post News Network
New Delhi : Union Health and Family Welfare Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan addressed the British Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (BAPIO) Wales at their Annual Conference digitally from Nirman Bhawan on January 30, 2021, night. His talk was titled “COVID in India- A success story”.
Dr Vardhan reminisced about the one-year fight undertaken by India since the beginning of COVID-19 Pandemic. He said, “COVID-19 pandemic broke out in December 2019 and spread across the world. With the ‘whole of government’ and ‘whole of society’ approach, we were able to fight the pandemic, much better than other countries. India was the first country to respond within an hour when WHO declared it as a pandemic. Planning started on January 8; guidelines for whole country were drafted by 17th; Massive surveillance started on the same day with meticulous contact tracing unparalleled in the world. India was also one of the first countries to isolate the virus. With a focus on health infrastructure, we increased the lab facilities to 2,362 today from the sole lab at NIV; made provisions for more than 19 lakh beds at more than 15,000 facilities serving people at different tiers based on their severity of COVID; 12,000 quarantine centers were also built for easy isolation. The country took the bold decision to being Aatma-Nirbar with ramping up of manufacturing of PPE to 5 lakh kits per day. We also created bio-repositories while genome sequencing has also started 6 months back.”
“The 22nd of March saw people paying heed to the call of the PM for Janata curfew and self-imposed it to protect themselves, their family and the entire society from the virus. This ‘whole of society’ approach has made the crucial difference behind the highest recovery rate of the world,” Dr Vardhan said. He also detailed how the government eased the pain of the vulnerable sections ensuring that they manage to get food and every other basic need for next 6 to 7 months as well as the provisions that were made for sending back migrant labourers to their native place via special trains, according to a PIB release.
Emphasizing how each and every component of the government acted in sync to control the pandemic, Dr Vardhan noted, “With all the efforts, it was important to teach COVID appropriate behaviour, for which our PM personally addressed nation 8 to 9 times. Caller tune was set to inform COVID appropriate behaviour; the Aarogya Setu app gave warning of nearby affected people; around 160 million people downloaded it.”
He also brought the incessant prejudice faced by the country into limelight; Many naysayers linked to top universities predicted doom for the country with the prediction of 300 to 400 million cases and a death toll of around 6 million. India’s total cases in contrast stand at 10.7 million (with 10.4 million already recovered), the active caseload a mere 1.58% of total cases, the recovery rate touching 97% while fatality rate of 1.44% remains lowest in the world.
Dr Vardhan shared his deep gratitude to the scientific community for their immeasurable contribution in developing and testing the Vaccine. ” The unique digital platform- Co-WIN (Winning over COVID) was developed to support the vaccination activity with real time information ensuring that the vaccine is given to the right people at the right time. Among the many vaccines under various phases of development in the country, two vaccines were granted Emergency Use Authorisation by the Indian regulators in January 2021.”
The COVID-19 vaccination drive, the world’s largest vaccination drive so far, was finally launched by the Prime Minister on January 16, 2021, 2021. The Day 1 witnessed vaccination of the highest number of beneficiaries covered anywhere in the world, he said and added 35,00,027 Health Care Workers have been vaccinated across more than 68,000 sessions.