New Delhi: Against the backdrop of a spike in COVID19 cases in India, Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare Dr Harsh Vardhan on Thursday said that containment strategy 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.
Dr Vardhan was talking in a virtual meeting of the regional director of WHO for South-East Asia Dr Poonam Khetrapal Singh with ministers for Health of the member states of the region. "India accordingly prioritised availability of essential health services while simultaneously managing COVID 19 pandemic," said Dr Vardhan.
He said that designing containment and management strategies suing the "whole of government approach."
"India's proactive and 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 and per capita doctor and hospital bed availability as compared to other developed countries," said Dr Vardhan.
He said that India's lockdown strategy was also 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 1370 labs today. Indians anywhere can access a lab within 3 hours of travel time. 33 of the 36 states and UTs exceed WHO's recommendation of testing 140 people per million per day," said Dr Vardhan.
He informed that the web-based National Teleconsultation Service online OPD service (patient to doctor) has completed 71,865 consultations.
Meanwhile, Central government on Thursday has released Rs 890.32 crore as the second instalment of the Covid19 emergency response and health system preparedness package to 22 states and UTs including Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Assam Dadra and Nagar Haveli among others.
The first instalment of Rs 3000 crore was earlier released in April.
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