Amid covid upsurge in China, review meet by Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya gets under way

New Delhi, December 21

The meeting by Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya to review India’s covid-19 situation began here on Wednesday.

Pandemic persists

India is witnessing 1,200 cases, while 35 lakh cases are being recorded the world over on a weekly basis.

Beijing reports 5 more deaths

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Cities across China scrambled to install hospital beds and build fever clinics as authorities reported five more deaths amid global concern.

ICMR Head of Virology Nivedita Gupta, NTAGI head NK Arora, Member Health Niti Ayog VK Paul, and members from NCDC and DBT are present at the meeting.

Ahead of the review, Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan wrote to all states and UTs on Tuesday asking them to ensure that samples of all positive cases were daily sent for genome sequencing to study the nature of the variants.

The upsurge in China is of major concern worldwide with the pandemic having originally spread from Wuhan.

The US had said that China’s covid outbreak might spawn mutations in the virus. “When it comes to the current outbreak in China, we want to see this addressed,” US State Department spokesman Ned Price said, expressing worry.