The next two-and-a-half months were going to be crucial in India’s “fight against COVID-19 because of the winter season and the festival season,” Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said at a meeting to review activities under a ‘Jan Andolan’.
The virtual meeting was to review the activities taken on “COVID-19 appropriate behaviour” and involved the Minister as well as heads of AIIMS and Central government hospitals, on Wednesday. COVID-19 appropriate behaviour includes wearing face-covers, masks, and observing physical distancing. “We have created significant infrastructure for our fight against COVID, which includes over 90 lakh beds, over 12,000 quarantine centres and more than 1,900 labs,” he said.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the ‘Jan Andolan’ earlier this month to alert people on appropriate behaviour ahead of the festive season.
“India was continuously recording new milestones in treatment of Covid. Our recovery rate is the highest in the world and the fatality is among the lowest in the world. The active cases are constantly declining. All the parameters have proven the success of the COVID-19 containment strategy followed by all States and Union territories. We have successfully ramped up our testing capacity which has crossed 9 Cr today. India also has now become self reliant in terms of masks and PPE kits which we earlier used to import.”
India’s total recovered cases stood at 6,301,927 on Wednesday.
Given the seasonal pattern of epidemic prone diseases observed every year such as dengue, malaria, seasonal influenza, leptospirosis, chikungunya, enteric fever, the ailments could present a "diagnostic dilemma and also co-exist in COVID cases, the ministry said in a release.
