As India crossed the one crore infection mark, Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan on Saturday announced that the country is on the cusp of authorising the first set of Covid-19 vaccines and expressed the need for an expeditious vaccination drive to cover all the target populations estimated to be 30 crore.
“We should follow coronavirus guidelines even at a time when the country is on the cusp of authorising the first set of vaccines,” said the Minister while chairing the 22nd meeting of the high-level Group of Ministers (GoM) on Covid-19 through a video-conference.
Expressing gratitude to all Covid warriors, Vardhan shared with his colleagues the progress made by the country’s public health system against the pandemic and the encouraging results so far. The Minister said that India’s Covid-19 pandemic growth has dropped to 2 per cent and the case fatality rate is amongst the lowest in the world at 1.45 per cent. “India’s Recovery Rate has peaked to 95.46 per cent, while the strategy of testing 1 million samples has decreased the Cumulative Positivity Rate to 6.25 per cent,” he added.
Harsh Vardhan was virtually joined by External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep S Puri, Minister of State Health & Family Welfare Ashwini Kumar Choubey, Minister of State for Home Affairs Nityanand Rai, Member NITI Aayog Vinod K Paul, Advisers to the PM Amarjeet Sinha and Bhaskar Khulbe.
Observing the fact that despite festivals in October and November, Vardhan said no new surge of cases was observed in this period due to comprehensive testing, tracking and treatment policy implemented on the ground.
Sujeet K Singh, Director (NCDC), presented a detailed report on how the data-driven graded government policies have helped India achieve significant control over the pandemic. Singh presented a granular analysis of the trajectory of the pandemic in each state pointing out critical parameters like positivity, RAT and RT-PCR per cent breakup, the concentration of cases in particular districts and other trends like a fatality, and fatality within 48 and 72 hours of hospitalisation. He also presented data on the total dedicated Covid-19 facilities in the country.
Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan noted the importance of health seeking behaviour among the population as a key driver in checking fatality.