Driving Naari Programme launched in Chandigarh
New Delhi : Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday chaired a review meeting on the Covid-19 situation in the country through video conference as India witnessed a sharp spike in the cases of the deadly infection.
In the meeting that had Union Home Minister Amit Shah, Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya, and other senior government functionaries in attendance, Prime Minister stressed on the need to ensure adequate health infrastructure at the district level.
“PM urged to further accelerate vaccine drive for adolescents in mission mode. PM directed that intensive containment & active surveillance should continue in clusters reporting higher cases & required technical support be provided to states reporting higher cases presently,” Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement.
PM Modi will now convene a meeting with the Chief Ministers to discuss state-specific scenarios, best-practices, and the public health response. “He highlighted the need to ensure continuity of non-Covid health services while managing Covid cases presently,” an official statement by Prime Minister’s Office added.
The meeting comes at a time when India has been witnessing a massive spike in COVID-19 cases due to the Omicron variant of the infection that was detected in South Africa in November last year. On Sunday, India reported more than 1.59 lakh new COVID-19 cases with the daily positivity rate rising to 10.21 per cent, said the Union Health Ministry.
This, as per the Health Ministry, is the biggest one-day spike since May 29 last year when India had detected over 1.65 lakh new COVID-19 cases. India’s Omicron caseload has also jumped to 3,623, as per the health ministry data, which experts believe is an indication of the beginning of the third wave of the pandemic in the country.
Amid the alarming spike, several state governments and union territory (UT) administrations – including Delhi, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh – have reimposed restrictions such as night curfews and weekend lockdowns.
The Health Ministry has also expressed concerns over the rise and stressed that mass gatherings need to be avoided to lower the speed of the infection spread. It also said that “the Omicron variant is the predominant circulating strain” in big cities.
“We are now facing an exponential rise in (the number of) COVID-19 cases and we believe that largely, it is being driven by Omicron, particularly so in the western parts of our country and even particularly so in larger cities from where we have more data,” NITI Aayog member (Health) Dr VK Paul said on January 5.
“Clearly, this is an expanding pandemic. The R nought value is 2.69. This is higher than the 1.69 we saw when the second wave of the pandemic was at its peak. The acceleration of cases is steeper than ever,” Paul added.
