Need for expeditious COVID-19 vaccination drive to cover targeted population: Harsh Vardhan

Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan on Saturday stressed need for an expeditious COVID-19 vaccination drive to cover entire target population estimated to be around 30 crore.

Vardhan was speaking while chairing 22nd meeting of high-level Group of Ministers (GoM) on COVID-19 through video-conferencing on Saturday. meeting comes on a day India's COVID-19 caselo surpassed somber one-crore mark.

"India's COVID 19 pandemic growth has dropped to 2 per cent and case fatality rate is among lowest in world at 1.45 per cent," Vardhan said.

"India's Recovery Rate has peaked to 95.46 per cent while strategy of testing one million samples has decreased Cumulative Positivity Rate to 6.25 per cent," he ded.

Observing that despite festivals in October and vember, new surge in cases was observed due to comprehensive testing, tracking and treatment policy implemented on ground, Vardhan appealed to people to diligently maintain COVID-appropriate behaviour even at a time when country is at cusp of authorizing first set of vaccines, a Union Health Ministry statement said.

He also expressed need for an expeditious vaccination drive to cover all target populations estimated to be around 30 crores, it ded.

Minister of External Affairs Dr S Jaishankar, Civil Aviation minister Hardeep S Puri, Minister of State for Health Ashwini Kumar Choubey and Minister of State for Home Affairs Nityanand Rai also joined Vardhan during meeting.

Dr Vid K Paul, Member (Health), NITI Aayog, Amarjeet Sinha, viser to prime minister and Bhaskar Khulbe, viser to prime minister were present in meeting virtually.

Dr. Sujeet K Singh, Director (NCDC) presented a detailed report on how data driven gred government policies have helped India achieve a significant control over pandemic.

He showed figures related to number of cases, number of deaths, ir growth rate and how y compared favourably to rest of world which is witnessing a meteoric rise in se parameters, statement said.

He also presented a granular analysis of trajectory of pandemic in each state, pointing out critical parameters like positivity, RAT and RT-PCR percent breakup, concentration of cases in particular districts and or trends like fatality and fatality within 48 and 72 hours of hospitalization, statement said.

He also presented data on total dedicated COVID-19 facilities in country, according to which a total of 15,359 such facilities, over 15 lakh isolation beds, 2.70 lakh oxygen supported beds, 80,727 ICU beds and 40,575 ventilators were present.

Through a detailed presentation, Paul apprised GoM on three critical aspects of vaccination -- process of pre-clinical and clinical trial of all vaccines, details of six vaccine candidates undergoing trial in India (in terms of composition, manufacturers and technical partners, numbers of doses, conditions for stor and efficacy) and composition of target populations in India, in terms of , occupation and comorbidities and how y compare with or countries and WHO's recommendations, it said.

He also briefed GoM about requests for vaccines received by Ministry of External Affairs from 12 or countries. Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan ted importance of Health Seeking Behaviour among population as a key driver in checking fatality.

Explaining parox of some States/UTs reporting very high cases but minimal fatalities while ors reporting low cases but comparatively high fatalities, he said this phemen results from people t coming forward for testing even if y are symptomatic in second category of states. 

(Photo Credit: Twitter/drharshvardhan)