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New Delhi : Highlighting India’s approach in combating COVID-19, Health & Family Welfare (H&FW) MInister, Government of India, on April 20, 2020, said, “This time the hallmark of our approach has been fivefold: (i) Maintaining a continuous situation awareness (ii) Pre-emptive and proactive approach (iii) Graded response as per continuously evolving scenario (iv) Inter-sectoral coordination at all levels, and lastly but most importantly (v) Creating a people’s movement to combat this disease.”
Talking about India’s strategic response to the disease, Dr Vardhan said, “Much before the outbreak was declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern by the World Health Organization, India was much ahead in implementing actions targeting core capacities as mandated under the International Health Regulations (IHR). Our efforts have been pre-emptive and proactive. We started surveillance of flights from COVID affected countries twelve days before we even had the first case in India on January 30, 2020. By March 22, 2020, with less than 400 cases, we had banned all international flights to and from India, and by March 25, 2020 ,we had implemented a nationwide lockdown.”
Dr Vardhan was addressing the Video Conference of the Health Ministers of G20 countries, an international forum for the governments of 19 countries and the European Union (EU). The 19-member countries of G20 are : Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Germany, France, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States of America and India.
Talking about the present scenario of COVID in the country, he said, “As of today, the April 19, we have completed 25 days of lockdown which will further extend till May 3. The results of the same were realised when our case doubling rate which was about 3.4 days on the March 17, dropped to 4.4 days by March 25, and is currently about 7.2 days.”
Dr Vardhan said, “India has made the conscious decision to focus on building exclusive infrastructure for management of COVID patients so that there is no intermingling of COVID patients. All the people who are tested positive are treated at one of three types of dedicated COVID management Centres: COVID Care Centres(CCCs) for mild symptomatic cases, COVID Health Centres(CHCs) for moderate cases and COVID Hospitals (CHs) for severe cases. These dedicated COVID facilities are mapped to each other in the design of a referral network architecture for dynamic movement of patients as symptoms evolve, so that optimal clinical care can be provided timely, commensurate to symptoms.”
Talking about specific disease prevention and containment measures, he said, “In the absence of any specific drug or vaccine, India relied on various non-pharmacological interventions. Particular focus was on measures like social distancing and risk communication to the masses on simple public health interventions like hand hygiene and respiratory etiquettes.”