Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday held a virtual meeting with Chief Ministers to discuss the Covid-19 situation in the country and stressed on local containment of the coronavirus spread as well as ensuring minimum damage to livelihood. In his remarks at the meeting, he underlined the importance of vaccination and the need to further accelerate the ‘Har Ghar Dastak’ programme to achieve 100 per cent vaccination coverage. He also urged the citizens not to panic amid the rising cases of the Omicron variant and appealed to them to be alert.
PM Modi said the doubts that were there earlier about Omicron variant are slowly getting cleared now. “We don’t have to panic. Our alertness should not go down. Most world experts say that be it any variant, the vaccine is the best weapon to fight it. We must ensure that vaccine-related falsehood is fought,” he said, adding that 130 crore people of India will surely emerge victorious from the pandemic with their collective efforts.
He said all states and UTs must conduct intensive testing and aim at treating most cases in home isolation. “Tracking and treatment facilities should be good during home isolation, only then will the burden on hospitals decrease and infrastructure can be maintained,” he said.
Speaking on innovative methods to fight the infection, he said, “I am happy that some states are innovating so as to achieve targets of maximum testing and tracking. Use telemedicine as much as you can,” he said.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah and Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya also attended the meeting with chief ministers. Fresh curbs have been imposed in various parts of the country to check the spread of the highly transmissible virus.
Reviewing the Covid situation at a high-level meeting on Sunday, Modi had called for ensuring adequate health infrastructure at the district level and accelerating the vaccination drive for adolescents in mission mode. The precaution vaccination drive for healthcare and frontline workers, besides those over 60 years of age with comorbidities, has also started.
Vaccination remains among the most effective means to fight Covid, Modi had said. The prime minister had said that a meeting with the chief ministers be convened to discuss state-specific scenarios, best practices and the public health response.
The meeting came on a day India logged 2,47,417 new infections, the highest in 236 days, taking the total tally of Covid-19 cases to 3,63,17,927, which included 5,488 cases of the Omicron variant, according to the Union Health Ministry data.
(with inputs from PTI)
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