'India's response to COVID-19 has been proactive and graded': Dr. Harsh Vardhan to WHO

Union Health Minister Dr. Harsh Vardhan, during a virtual interactive session with global leaders at the World Health Organization (WHO) on Thursday, detailed India's pre-emptive and proactive measures in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. The Union Health Minister reportedly mentioned that special measures were taken to mitigate the number of casualties and contain the spread of the deadly infection much before the country saw its first positive case of COVID-19. 

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India proactive

"India was first to respond to COVID -19 and stands on a better footing then the rest of the world because of the valuable and sincere services of our Corona warriors,” said Dr. Harsh Vardhan while speaking to a news agency.

Referring to the active surveillance efforts made by government agencies to monitor potential victims and carriers of the disease, Dr. Harsh Vardhan said, “We know the enemy and its whereabouts. We are able to check this enemy through community surveillance, issuance of various advisories, cluster containment, and dynamic strategy.”

Speaking about how the crisis arising in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic has been turned into an opportunity to strengthen the healthcare delivery system in the country, Dr. Harsh Vardhan said, “We had only one Lab at the National Institute of Virology (NIV) at Pune, to perform tests for COVID-19 initially. During the last 3 months we have scaled up the number of government labs to 230 aided by another 87 private labs with more than 16,000 collection centers. Till now we have tested more than 5 lakh people for COVID-19. We are going to increase the numbers of government labs to 300 and ramp up our present daily testing capacity of 55,000 to 01 Lakh per day by 31st May 2020.”

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India under lockdown 

The country is currently in the second phase of the nationwide lockdown announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on April 14. In an address to the nation, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said, "It is clearly evident from the experience of the past few days, that we have chosen the correct path. Our country has greatly benefited from social distancing and lockdown. From an economic only point of view, it undoubtedly looks costly right now; but measured against the lives of Indian citizens, there is no comparison itself. The path that India has taken within our limited resources has become a topic of discussion in the entire world today."

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