Rajiv Kumar, Vice-Chairman of NITI Aayog.

NITI Ayog Vice Chairman Rajiv Kumar, in an interview with CNN News18, said that the second wave of the coronavirus took everyone by surprise, however, the country has responded well. Kumar also said that the supply-demand situation is much better now.

As per Kumar, one of the things which is needed further is more stringent measures where the positivity rate is more in comparison to districts with low positivity. "Now there are around 200 districts with 10 plus positivity rate, you can’t have the same thing in two different situations," he said adding that attributing increased infection to localised approach is wrong.

He also said that the government has taken extraordinary steps to ramp up the production of oxygen and transport given the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic.

As regards infrastructure sector, Kumar said that the industry has more employment elasticity than the average employment elasticity.

On the much-debated Central Vista Project, Kumar said that the expenditure made on the project is not even a drop spent on the health sector. " We have underinvested in health sectors for decades now. Our expenditure on AIIMS is up 200 percent," he said.

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Central Vista project expenditure not even a drop spent on health sector, says NITI Ayog Vice Chairman Rajiv Kumar

Kumar also noted that the government has issued health insurance to 500 million people under Ayushman Bharat. "We have created so much infra but yet it is short, this (the central vista project) is politicised," he said.

Rajiv Kumar, Vice-Chairman of NITI Aayog.

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