Top bureaucrats express serious concern over COVID-19 spike

Dr Surjeet Kumar Singh, Director, National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), said that as of Thursday, India's seven days case growth rate (12.93 per cent) was next to the USA and Brazil. Giving a detailed scenario in a Group of Ministers (GoM) meeting on the situation, Dr Singh said 11 states together contributed to 54 per cent of the total COVID cases and 65 per cent of the total deaths in the country.

New Delhi:Two top-level back-to-back meetings in the Government of India on Friday expressed serious concerns over the daily spike in COVID-19 cases.

Sources in the government told ETV Bharat that the first meeting between Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister Dr PK Mishra and Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhusan discussed the overall situation that has risen across India following the second wave of the pandemic.

Bhushan informed Dr Mishra of the various steps are being adopted by the department to contain the spike. Bhushan also briefed about the vaccination process that is happening across the country.

In the second meeting with Cabinet Secretary Rajiv Gauba, Bhushan gave a detailed presentation on the vaccination process. They discussed the availability and distribution of vaccines to different states. The meeting also saw discussions in details about the complaint being registered by different state governments over the shortage of COVID-19 vaccines.

Dr Surjeet Kumar Singh, Director, National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), said that as of Thursday, India's seven days case growth rate (12.93 per cent) was next to the USA and Brazil. Giving a detailed scenario in a Group of Ministers (GoM) meeting on the situation, Dr Singh said 11 states together contributed to 54 per cent of the total COVID cases and 65 per cent of the total deaths in the country.

He said death rate in Maharastra and Punjab has further increased during the last 14 days.

It was told in the meeting that majority of the cases were reported in the younger population (15-44 years of age) and the most deaths were seen among the elderly population (60 years and above).

The GoM was informed that a high test positivity rate was seen in Maharastra (25 per cent) and Chhattisgarh (14 per cent).

Dr Singh informed that laxity in following COVID-appropriate behaviour, containment zone activities and increased social gatherings resulted in an increase in the number of cases.

Union Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan, chairing the 24th meeting of GoM, reiterated that there was no dearth of COVID beds, ICU beds and oxygen in hospitals. He said the country had substantially ramped up hospital infrastructure for the management of COVID.

As many as 2,084 dedicated COVID hospitals (Centre 89 and states 1,995) have been set up in the country with a total of 4,68,974 COVID beds. Of these, 2,63,573 are isolation beds, 50,408 are ICU beds and 1,54,993 Oxygen-supported beds.

A total of 4,043 dedicated COVID health centres have also been set up with public-private-partnership.

The health minister informed that there were no fresh cases in the last seven days in 149 districts of the country. Similarly, eight districts reported no new cases in the last 14 days while 63 districts reported no fresh cases in the last 28 days.

The GoM meeting was attended by External Affairs Minister Dr S Jaishankar, Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri and Minister of State for Ports, Shipping and Waterways Mansukh Mandaviya among others.