With India’s COVID-19 caseload rising rapidly, Prime Minister Narendra Modi chaired a meeting of the Union Council of Ministers on Friday and discussed the situation arising out of the second wave of coronavirus in the country.
The council of ministers noted that the present pandemic crisis is ‘once in a century crisis’ and has thrown a big challenge for the world.
The council of Ministers stressed the importance of Covid appropriate behaviour, ie, wearing a mask, maintaining social distancing (of 6 feet) and washing hands frequently.
The meeting noted that ‘participation of society is a key aspect to accomplish the gigantic task ahead and expressed confidence that the country will rise to the occasion and defeat the virus’.
While interacting with the ministers, PM Modi urged the ministers to reach out to people of their regions to look into their issues, help them and keep getting their feedback. He stressed the need to ensure that issues at the local level are promptly identified and addressed.
PM Modi said that all arms of the government are working unitedly and rapidly to deal with the COVID situation.
The Union Council of Ministers discussed the efforts by the Centre in coordination with the states towards building up infrastructure in the form of ramping up hospital beds, PSA oxygen facilities, etc, resolving issues in production, storage and transport of Oxygen, tackling matters relating to availability of essential medicines.
PM Modi was also briefed about the steps being taken to further ramp up the supplies of medical equipment and oxygen.
The support measures to the vulnerable population in the form of provision of food-grains and financial support to Jan Dhan account holders were also pointed out during the meeting, the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting stated.
“The high-level meeting It was also noted that India could successfully produce two vaccines and there are many candidates at the various stages of approval and induction. More than 15 crore vaccinations have been done as on date,” the ministry further said.
The meeting comes on day when India recorded new daily high of 3,86,452 new coronavirus cases in a span of 24 hours. The death toll increased to 2,08,330 with 3,498 more patients succumbing due to the deadly virus.
Currently, India has 31,70,228 active coronavirus cases.
