India was first in responding to the COVID-19 crisis and stands on a better footing than the rest of the world because of the valuable and sincere services of 'corona warriors', Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said on Thursday.
Referring to the active surveillance efforts of the government agencies to monitor potential victims or carriers of the disease, Vardhan said, "We are able to check this enemy through community surveillance, issuance of various advisories, cluster containment and dynamic strategy".
He said the government intends to increase the numbers of government labs to 300 and ramp up the present daily testing capacity of 55,000 to one lakh per day by May 31. "India's response has been proactive, pre-emptive and graded in handling the situation arising out of COVID-19 outbreak," Vardhan said while participating in an online interactive session with Health Ministers of member countries of World Health Organization (WHO) on the measures being taken for containment of COVID-19.
Underlining that the current situation on COVID-19 in the world is alarming and requires special measures to mitigate the number of casualties, the minister exhorted the WHO officials and said, "We are meeting in troubled times and we have to work together by sharing our best practices to eradicate coronavirus infection".
The death toll due to COVID-19 rose to 686 and the number of cases climbed to 21,700 in the country on Thursday, according to the Union Health Ministry.
However, a PTI tally of the figures reported by various states as on Thursday showed 22,951 cases and 721 deaths in the country.
There has been a lag in the Union Health Ministry figures, compared to the number of deaths announced by different states, which officials attribute to procedural delays in assigning the cases to individual states.
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, Vardhan 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 three months we have scaled up the number of government labs along with 87 private labs.
"Till now we have 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 one lakh per day by May 31."
Elaborating further on the preparations made by the country to deal with the crisis, he said the government has classified COVID-19 treatment facilities, based on severity of the disease, into three categories - COVID Care Centres for patients with mild symptoms, COVID Health Care Centres for patients with medium symptoms and dedicated COVID Hospitals for patients with severe symptoms.
These three types of COVID-19 centres are duly mapped to facilitate transfer of patients as per the severity of the case.
Further, while referring to the solutions meant to address the curiosity of people to know about the risk hovering around, Vardhan highlighted the effectiveness of 'Aarogya Setu' mobile application which has been downloaded by more than 7.2 crore people.
It is a mobile application developed by the government to connect essential health services with the people of India in the combined fight against COVID-19, he said.
"The App is aimed at augmenting the initiatives of the government 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," he said.
Concluding his session, the minister said, "...People have also supported our efforts in making the lockdown successful. 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."
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