New Delhi: Hours after Union Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan gave a statement in the Lok Sabha over India’s strategy to fight Covid-19 pandemic, Association of Health Care Providers (AHCPI) has taken note of the fact that there was no mention about private players who have been playing a big role in India’s fight against the pandemic.
“Unfortunately, while presenting the statement this aspect (private players) was missing…though he recognized the role of the private sector, I would have been happy on the behalf of the private industry if the word of appreciation should have been covered on the statement,” said Dr Giridhar Gyani, director-general of AHCPI to ETV Bharat.
The association represents the private sector hospital and health care facilities in India. Dr Gyani said that in Mumbai, Ahmedabad and Delhi private players are playing a very big role.
“In fact, the majority of the tracery care beds are have been possessed by the private sector. Critical care patients, which accounts for 1.7 percent of the total corona cases, require ICU which has been provided by the private players,” said Dr Gyani, who is also a member of the national task force on COVID hospitals.
Dr Harsh Vardhan in his statement given in the parliament said that as on September 11, a total of 45,62,414 confirmed cases and 76,271 deaths (Case Fatality Rate 1.67 percent) have been reported in India. As many as 35,42,663 (77.65 percent) cases have recovered. The maximum cases and deaths have been primarily reported from Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, West Bengal, Bihar, Telangana, Odisha, Assam, Kerala and Gujarat.
“With our endeavour to manage COVID-19, India has been able to limit its cases and deaths per million to 3,328 cases per million and 55 deaths per million population respectively, which is one of the lowest in the world as compared to similarly affected countries,” said Dr Vardhan.
He said that about 92 percent of the cases are reported to be having mild disease. In only about 5.8 per cent of cases where oxygen therapy is required and the disease may be severe enough to require intensive care in only 1.7 percent cases.
The nationwide lockdown prevented approximately 14–29 lakh cases and 37–78 thousand deaths. “Further, these four months were utilized to create additional health infrastructure, enhance human resources and produce within India critical elements such as PPEs, N-95 masks and ventilators. A case in point is the increase in dedicated isolation beds 36.3 times and dedicated ICU beds above 24.6 times to what existed in March 2020,” he said.
He said that the central Government is proactively identifying gaps and building an Atma Nirbhar Bharat that will be able to take challenges of similar pandemics, epidemics and disasters in future.
“An Expenditure Finance Memorandum of Rs 65,560.98 Crores under Prime Minister Atmanirbhar Swasth Bharat Yojana for strengthening is under consideration. This includes investment in research, healthcare and public health infrastructure with particular focus on pandemic management,” he said.
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He said that apart from setting up 11 empowered groups, the Health Ministry is constantly reviewing the evolving scenario.
“Video conferences are being held with States regularly. We have held 63 video conferences so far with State Health Ministers, Health functionaries and district level officials. The Joint Monitoring Group (JMG) under the Chairmanship of DGHS which advises MoHFW on technical matters has met 40 times till now to assess the risk, review the preparedness & response mechanisms and finalize technical guidelines,” Dr Vardhan said.
He said that universal screening of passengers from all countries was introduced and up to March 23, (till suspension of all commercial flights), a total of 14,154 flights with 15,24,266 passengers were screened at the airports. In addition to airports, about 16.31 lakh persons were screened at land border crossings and about 86,379persons were screened at 12 major, 65 minor seaports.
Prior to the lockdown 1.0, the Government of India evacuated Indian nationals from Wuhan in China, Diamond Princess Cruise Ship, Japan, Iran, Italy and Malaysia. Under Vande Bharat Mission, as reported on September 11, a total of 12,69,172 passengers have been brought back to India, he said.
He said that community surveillance was initiated initially for travel-related cases and subsequently for cases being reported from the community by Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme (IDSP). “As on September 11, a total of about 40 lakh persons have been kept under surveillance and extensive contact tracing of all positive cases is regularly being undertaken through disease surveillance network so as to break the chain of transmission,” he said.
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Referring to the Covid19 vaccine, Dr Vardhan said that India has put a major focus on facilitating the development of COVID19 vaccine. “More than 30 vaccine candidates have been supported which are in different stages of development, 3 candidates are in an advanced stage of Phase I/II/III trials and more than 4 are in the advanced preclinical development stage,” said Dr Vardhan.
COVID-19 Biorepositories have been set up, which have collected more than 40,000 samples which have been made available to researchers and industry for developing diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines, he said.
He said that the Ministry of AYUSH has also initiated an impact assessment of effectiveness, acceptance and usage of AYUSH advisories and measures in prevention of COVID 19 through a mobile application app known as AYUSH-Sanjivani app.
He said that states have been requested to assess the stock of their logistic, particularly Personal Protective Equipment and procure the same. Total orders for 1.92 crore PPEs have been placed by the Central Government so far. The Ministry has already supplied 1.39 Crore PPE Kits and 3.43 crore N95 masks to States, Dr Vardhan informed in the house.
“Department of Pharmaceuticals increased the production of drug hydroxychloroquine manifolds. As on September 11, MoHFW has issued 10.84 crore tablets of Hydroxychloroquine to States and UTs. India has also exported it to more than 140 countries,” Dr Vardhan said.
He said that the Department of Bio-Technology, Department of Science and Technology, CSIR and Department of Health Research covered the entire chain of scientific and technological solutions holistically for COVID-19 through academia, R&D labs, industry, startups and NGOs. “For these purposes, a comprehensive mapping of our entire startup ecosystem was done to identify and support over 110 technology startups and over 20 industries for commercial production. Over 150 projects in all areas of virus behaviour have been initiated,” said Dr Vardhan.
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