Amid Omicron threat, Prime Minister Modi urges effective contact tracing and health infrastructure development | The Weather Channel – Articles from The Weather Channel
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(IANS)
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, chairing a high-level meeting on Thursday to review public health response measures to contain and manage COVID-19 and strengthen health infrastructure, including the availability of medicines and oxygen cylinders at the amid growing fear of Omicron, called for rapid response and effective contact tracing, intensified testing and accelerated vaccination.
He was briefed on the globally emerging scenario driven by the new variant, with an overview of the spike in cases in countries with high vaccination coverage and the presence of the Omicron variant. He was also informed of the WHO technical note and the priority actions in this context.
He was presented with a snapshot of the status of COVID-19 and its Omicron variant in the country, including states reporting higher number of cases, districts reporting higher positivity and higher number of clusters. . He was also briefed on the action taken when the Department of Health’s first notice was shared with the states.
The Prime Minister has ordered officials to maintain high vigilance and vigilance at all levels. It has led the Center to work in close coordination with States to support their containment measures and public health management efforts within the framework of the “whole of government” approach.
“The Center’s strategy for proactive, targeted, collaborative and cooperative pandemic response should guide all our future actions,” he said. “Given the new variant, we should be ‘satark’ (alert) and ‘saavdhan’ (cautious). The fight against the pandemic is not over, and the need to continue adhering to COVID safe behavior is d ‘of paramount importance even today’, he stressed.
The Prime Minister instructed officials to ensure that state health systems, starting at the district level, are strengthened to meet any challenges posed by the new variant. It is essential that states ensure that the types of oxygen supply equipment are installed and fully functional, he said.
He also told officials to work regularly with states and review the readiness of various components of the health infrastructure, including training and capacity building of human resources, rapid availability of ambulances, readiness of States to operationalize COVID facilities for institutional quarantine, and practical. He supervised the follow-up of people isolated at home.
He said increased and close monitoring of emerging clusters and hotspots through active, timely and effective surveillance should continue. He led the rapid dispatch of a good number of positive samples for genome sequencing to INSACOG laboratories while accelerating testing to ensure rapid identification of cases for timely containment and treatment.
The Prime Minister said teams should be sent to states with low vaccination, rising cases and insufficient health infrastructure to improve the situation.
Knowing that more than 88% of the eligible population receives the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine and more than 60% the second dose, he said states must ensure that the eligible population is fully vaccinated and proceed to achieve the target in a saturation mode.
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