Union Health Secretary to brief Parliamentary Committee on COVID-19 containment strategy

On August 4, Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan will brief a Parliamentary Committee on Health and Family Welfare regarding the steps taken for contingent and mitigation following the outbreak of Covid-19 pandemic. A letter issued from Rajya Sabha secretariat has asked all the 30 members of the committee to be present for the meeting.

New Delhi: The newly appointed Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan will brief a Parliamentary Committee on Health and Family Welfare regarding the steps taken for contingent and mitigation following the outbreak of Covid-19 pandemic on August 4.

This will be the first appearance of Bhusan before a Parliamentary Committee after he takes charge as Health and Family Welfare secretary on August 1.

A letter issued from Rajya Sabha secretariat has asked all the 30 members of the committee to be present for the meeting.

Meanwhile, another Parliamentary Committee on External Affairs on Wednesday will be briefed by the Ministry of External Affairs, Home, Health and Family Welfare, and Civil Aviation on Covid-19 global response: India's contribution and way forward.

In a related development, as many as 15 cities in India now contribute 50 per cent of country's total COVID cases.

Cities and districts such as Kamrup Metropolitan, East Godavari, North 24 Paraganas, Nasik are some of the entrants indicating that cases are spilling over.

"Many of the places have started registering huge spike in Covid-19 cases," a government official said.

For example, in April there were only 10 Covid-19 cases in Nasik followed by 204 in May, and 1,986 in June registering a 10-time rise. In July cases in Nasik touched to 4,000.

According to official records, Nasik and North 24 Paraganas registered 0.9 per cent of the caseload, East Godavari, Palghar, Kamrup Metropolitan have registered caseload of 1.0 per cent.

Significantly, top five of the 15 high caseload cities including Delhi (87.3 per cent), Chennai (83.2), Ahmedabad (79.2), Mumbai (72.9), Raigad (64.50) reported a recovery rate which is higher than the national average of 64.24 per cent.

Meanwhile, India's fatality rate (CFR) on Tuesday further improves and drops to 2.25 per cent whereas more than 9.5 lakh people have already been recovered from the deadly disease.

The recovery rate has seen a sharp increase from around 53 per cent in mid-June to more than 64 per cent as on Tuesday. In the last 24 hours, 35,176 people have been discharged.

Health Ministry statistics said that there are 4,96,988 active Covid19 cases in India till date.

Meanwhile, WHO chief scientist Dr Soumya Swaminathan said that testing is key to successful control of Covid pandemic and all states should enhance testing capacity.