File photo of Dr. Harsh Vardhan
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Over 5 lakh tests conducted
17610 found Covid-19 positive
Of them 4748 cured in India as on today*
-globalbihari bureau
New Delhi: India is prepared for “high loads of patients in time to come”, Union Health and Family Welfare Minister Dr. Harsh Vardhan on Thursday told health ministers of member countries of World Health Organization (WHO) on the measures being taken for containment of COVID-19.
The minister was talking on the preparations made by the country to deal with the crisis. He informed till now Indos had tested more than 5 Lakh people for COVID-19. “We are going to increase the numbers of government labs to 300 and ramp up our present daily testing capacity of 55,000 to 01 Lakh per day by 31st May 2020,” he said.
The minister said India’s response had been “proactive, pre-emptive and graded in handling situation arising out of COVID-19 outbreak”.
Exhorting the WHO officials, Dr.Harsh Vardhan said, “We are meeting in troubled times and we have to work together by sharing our best practices to eradicate COVID-19.” He added: “The current situation on COVID-19 in the world is alarming and requires special measures to mitigate the number of casualties.”
According to the minister,India was “first” to respond to COVID -19 and “stands on a better footing than the rest of the world because of the valuable and sincere services of our Corona warriors”.
Referring to the active surveillance efforts made by the Government agencies to monitor potential victims or carriers of the disease, Dr. Harsh Vardhan said, “We know the enemy and its whereabouts. We are able to check this enemy through community surveillance, issuance of various advisories, cluster containment and dynamic strategy.”
Speaking about how the crisis arising out of COVID-19 has been turned into an opportunity to strengthen the healthcare delivery system in the country, he said, “We had only one Lab at the National Institute of Virology (NIV) at Pune, to perform tests for COVID-19 initially. During the last 03 months we have scaled up the number of government labs to 230 aided by another 87 private labs with more than 16,000 collection centers.
Elaborating further on the preparations made by the country to deal with the crisis, he said, “The Government has ensured preparedness for high loads of patients in times to come. The Government has classified COVID treatment facilities based on severity of the disease, into three categories, which are – COVID Care Centers for patients with mild symptoms, COVID Health Care Centers – for patients with medium symptoms and Dedicated COVID Hospitals for patients with severe symptoms. These three types of COVID centers are duly mapped to facilitate transfer of patients as per the severity of the case. We have in all 2,033 dedicated facilities in the country with more than 1,90,000 isolation beds, more than 24,000 ICU beds and more than 12,000 ventilators. All these facilities have been organized within last 03 months.”
Further, while referring to the solutions meant to curiosity of people to know about the risk hovering around, Dr. Harsh Vardhan highlighted the effectiveness of ‘AarogyaSetu’mobile application, which has been downloaded by more than 7.2 Crore people. It is a mobile application developed by the Government of India to connect essential health services with the people of India in our combined fight against COVID-19. The App is aimed at augmenting the initiatives of the Government of India, in proactively reaching out to and informing the users of the app, regarding risks, best practices and relevant advisories pertaining to the containment of COVID-19.
“I can assure that we are prepared for any eventuality and we are in a position to provide proper health care to all patients to make them healthy and fit for all times to come”, the minister said.
*Source Union Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, India[the_ad_placement id=”sidebar-feed”]
The honorable minister sounds over confident about the situation in India. If the situation in Maharashtra, Gujarat, Delhi and Madhya Pradesh is any indication, it is too early to become complacent about the containment of the pandemic
We have examples in front of us. Even the most developed countries with very strong health care system have collapsed under the weight of the surge in patients.
We have good models and bad models before us. South Korea is a good model and Italy, Spain and now the US have become bad models.
If the virus finds its way through the community, things will go completely out of control in a country with a population of more than 1.3 billion. Our medical infrastructure will not be able to cope up with a pressure of rising number of patients.
Only solution is to halt a potential community spread. Halt it before it becomes out of control. Strictly enforce lockdown across the country. No shortcuts.
It sounds good that Govt.is confident in tackling any eventuality but we have to be alert as few areas are giving very alarming figures. Lockdown and social distancing to be implemented with firm hand.