As Covid cases rise, govt plans festival-season SOPs

NEW DELHI: Amid rising number of Covid-19 cases across the country, the government is now worried about the forthcoming festival season. The issue was disPunjab, Haryana and Tamil Nadu — besides Rajasthan.cussed in the meeting of the group of ministers on Covid-19 on Saturday and the health ministry is likely to issue separate advisories soon.
Health ministry will also develop SOPs for members of Parliament and legislative assembly sessions comprising Covid protocols and preventive measures. Deliberating on the coordinated efforts of the Centre, states and UTs to contain the spread of Covid-19, health minister Harsh Vardhan said the case fatality rate is at its lowest 1.8%.
“In the month since the last meeting of GoM on July 31, we have made tremendous strides in containing the disease. As many as 26.4 lakh have already recovered. The country’s case fatality rate is at its lowest 1.8% and consecutively recovery rate has increased to 76.4%,” Vardhan said.
He informed the GoM that with creation of sufficient health facilities, the health infrastructure has been amply strengthened. Also, only 0.3% of cases are on ventilators, 1.9% in ICU and only 2.9% of cases are on oxygen. More than 9 lakh samples were tested in the last 24 hours and this has led to the cumulative total number of tests crossing the four crore mark, he added.
Chairman of empowered group-1, Dr Vinod K Paul, apprised the GoM of the process of Covid vaccine development in India and around the world. “Bharat Biotech’s vaccine candidate based on inactivated virus procured by ICMR is in Phase II trial along with Zydus Cadila’s candidate which is based on viral DNA. Oxford vaccine candidate by Serum Institute of India is already in Phase III trial,” said Paul.