Centre steps up efforts following spread of coronavirus in India

Union Minister Prakash Javadekar informed that the government has stepped up its efforts amid fears of rising coronavirus cases in India in a bid to combat the outbreak. The government has taken various preventive initiatives including screening of passengers at international airports as well as setting up more virology labs across the nation.

New Delhi: Union Minister Prakash Javadekar on Wednesday said that the Central government has stepped up its efforts to prevent the spread of Novel Coronavirus across the nation. The government has taken several initiatives which involve screening of passengers at international airports and India’s border with Bangladesh and Nepal, in addition to setting up more virology labs in the country for early detection of infection from the Covid-19 virus.

“We are screening passengers at 21 airports in the country and so far more than 6 lakh passengers have been screened,” Information and Broadcasting Minister Prakash Javadekar said following a cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi.

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"We are also screening the passengers at our border with Nepal and Bangladesh and more than 10 lakh passengers have been screened so far,” Javadekar stated.

The government has also stepped up its effort to diagnose the cases of coronavirus as there was only one virology lab in Pune to diagnose the infection. However, the government is setting up 34 more labs in different cities to combat the outbreak.

“There was only one Virology lab in Pune. We have already set up 15 labs so far and 19 more labs will be set up this week,” the Union Minister said.

Bringing back stranded Indians:

Prakash Javadekar informed that the government has brought as many as 124 people back to India who were stranded in the infected Japanese ship.

“119 were Indians and five of them are nationals of other countries,” he said.

Daily monitoring of the situation:

Javadekar said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been monitoring the situation regularly.

“The entire exercise is personally monitored by the Prime Minister,” he asserted.

He also said that the Cabinet Secretary, who is looking after coordination with state governments, is also in regular touch with chief secretaries to keep a vigil on the situation.

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