Indian government confident of defeating virus: Health Minister

Union Minister of Health & Family Welfare Dr Harsh Vardhan has said that India’s response has been proactive, pre-emptive and graded in handling the situation arising out of the Covid-19 outbreak.

Dr Harsh Vardhan was participating in a virtual interactive session with the Health Ministers of member countries of the World Health Organization (WHO) to discuss containment for Covid-19.

“India was first to respond to COVID -19 and stands on a better footing then the rest of the world because of the valuable and sincere servicaes of our Corona warriors,” Dr Harsh Vardhan stated.

He added that active surveillance by government agencies to monitor potential victims or carriers of the disease resulted in knowing about the enemy and its whereabouts. India was able to check this enemy through community surveillance, issuance of various advisories, cluster containment and dynamic strategy, Dr. Harsh Vardhan said.

Speaking on how the crisis has been turned into an opportunity, the minister said: “We had only one Lab at the National Institute of Virology (NIV) at Pune, to perform tests for Covid-19. During the last three 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.

He said that India has tested more than five lakh people and will increase the daily testing capacity from 55,000 to one lakh per day by May 31, 2020.

He added that the government is prepared for high loads of patients in times to come. The Government has classified Covid-19 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.

He added that India has 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 three months.

He also highlighted the efficacy of the Aarogya Setu mobile application, which has been downloaded by more than 7.2 crore people. It allows the government to share information regarding risks, best practices and advisories pertaining to Covid-19..