Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan on Thursday asserted that the spread of Covid-19 has been contained in the country, pointing out how half the total cases are from three states only and another 30 per cent from seven others.
His comments come even as India is all set to breach the 20-lakh mark of Covid-19 cases with over 40,000 deaths and record number of cases at over 50,000 infections being reported daily in the past few days.
Dr Harsh Vardhan was speaking at a virtual meeting of WHO’s Regional Director, South East Asia, Poonam Khetrapal Singh with Health Ministers from the region on maintaining essential health services and public health programmes in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“The strategy of containment has been successful in 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,” he said.
The Minister said that the lockdown was effective in slowing down the rate of growth of cases and gave the government time to augment the health infrastructure and testing facilities.
“From one lab in January, India has 1,370 labs today. Indians anywhere can access a lab within three hours travel time. 33 of the 36 states and UTs (Union Territories) exceed WHO’s recommendation of testing 140 people per million per day.”
Harsh Vardhan also said that the country was “preparing for the pandemic as soon as China informed the World Health Organisation on January 7”, over three weeks before the first case emerged.
India had reported its first coronavirus case on January 30 when a student from Kerala, who was studying in China’s Wuhan University, came back to India and tested positive for the deadly virus.
Harsh Vardhan also stressed that earlier viral outbreaks like the Avian Influenza, H1N1, Zika and Nipah had provided institutional memory in designing containment and management strategies.
“India’s proactive and graded multi-level institutional response to Covid-19 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, per capita doctor, and hospital bed availability as compared to other developed countries,” he contended.
Despite India’s population and low fractional GDP, the proactive and graded multi-level institutional response to COVID-19 by government has made it possible for the country to maintain “very low cases and deaths per million” population, the Union Health Minister said.
“India was preparing to fight the pandemic as soon as China informed WHO about it on January 7, Dr Harsh Vardhan said.