NEW DELHI, Sep 15: Though India has been able to limit the Corona cases and deaths per million in the country and adopted aggressive testing policy far ahead of the World Health Organisation (WHO) standard, the battle against the pandemic is far from being over, the Union health minister Harsh Vardhan said.
Speaking in the Rajya Sabha on Tuesday, Vardhan said the government was taking all necessary measures to prevent the spread of the disease. “I want to remind the members that battle against Covid-19 is far from over. I wish to inform the house that government is taking all necessary measures to prevent the spread of Covid-19 in India,” said Vardhan.
Pointing out that Covid cases in India had been limited to 3,320 and deaths at 55 per million, Vardhan said in both and the cases India’s records were lowest in the world. Similarly, in respect of testing India was performing about one million tests per day “which translates to 720 tests per million population per day, much higher than that stipulated by WHO which is 140 tests per million per day.” He said. A total of 5,51,89,226 samples were tested as of September 11,” the health minister said.
His remarks come on a day when India’s Covid-19 tally inched closer to the five million-mark. However, the daily case count fell below 90,000.
Vardhan had said on Monday that the central government undertook the Covid-19 challenge with the highest level of political commitment. “It has been estimated that its decisions prevented approximately 14-29 lakh cases and 37-78 thousand deaths,” he had said.
The health ministry has said that the recovery rate in the country was now very close to 78 per cent, and that 60 per cent of the active cases were concentrated only in five states: Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.
Giving details of the steps being taken by the ministry of Ayush for popularizing Yoga and making materials on Yoga available online on its digital platform, Vardhan claimed that practicing yoga was helping recovery of COVID-19 patients.
In this context, he pointed out that the Central Council for Research in Yoga & Naturopathy (CCRYN), had undertaken a research project to verify the efficacy of Yoga in facilitating early recovery of COVID – 19 patients in collaboration with Rajiv Gandhi Super Speciality Hospital, Delhi, AIIMS Delhi, AIIMS Rishikesh and RML Hospital, Delhi, and had found encouraging results.
Meanwhile, the Minister of State (Health and Family Welfare), Ashwini Kumar Choubey in a written reply in the Rajya Sabha gave details of the governmental assistances being provided to the COVID warriors including the provisions made under ‘Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Package for Health Workers Fighting COVID-19.
The Central Sector scheme provide an insurance cover of Rs. 50 lakh to healthcare providers, including community health workers, who may have to be in direct contact and care of COVID-19 patients and who may be at risk of being impacted by this. It would also include accidental loss of life on account of contracting COVID-19 over and above all other running insurance schemes, he added.
(Manas Dasgupta)