Union Home Secretary reviews COVID-19 situation in UTs

Tribune News Service
New Delhi, April 20

Union Home Secretary Ajay Bhalla today held a high-level review meeting to assess the Status of COVID-19 situation in the country and steps taken to contain the spread of infections and the state of other public health measures in all the Union Territories (UTs).

The government in an official statement said, “Bhalla, along with Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan, chaired a high-level meeting to review and discuss the COVID-19 status, and the management and response strategy with chief secretaries of all the UTs of India.”

According to it the meeting, held through video conference, was also attended by Member NITI Aayog Dr V K Paul, Director General ICMR Dr Balram Bhargava and Director Generals (DGs) of Police of all the UTs.

During the meeting it was advised that the UT administrations should “plan augmentation of hospital infrastructure in advance for next three weeks”, as they also need to ramp up testing and other infrastructure relating to large containment zones”, the government said in its statement, adding that suggestions were made with regard to “strict enforcement of COVID-19 appropriate behaviour and movement restrictions”.

Pointing out the steep growth in the number of cases all across the country, Bhalla said, from 20,000 cases reported on January 1 2021, India has almost 10 times more cases (more than 2,00,000 cases) being reported daily since April 15 2021.

“Through a detailed and comprehensive presentation, the current trajectory of total new COVID-19 cases, weekly tests, weekly positivity rate, weekly new COVID-19 cases, weekly number of deaths and status/proportion of RT-PCR tests and Rapid Antigen Test in all UTs were presented,” it said.

“UT of Delhi discussed shortage of beds and the present efforts to augment this through central government infrastructure and support through the DRDO’s recently operationalised COVID-19 Hospital. Delhi Government expressed gratitude for the timely support of Union Government for augmenting their hospital beds capacity, during last year and this year,” it is said in the statement, which also mentioned that the Delhi government’s efforts to ramp up testing and reduce the turnaround time for the test results were also outlined.