India has seen a sharp decrease in active Covid19 caseload from a level of 37 lakhs few weeks back to 27 lakhs now. Another positive sign is that the daily cases are below 3 lakhs for the eighth consecutive day, Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan noted during his address at 27th meeting of Group of Ministers on Covid19 held via video conferencing.
He highlighted that the number of recoveries is more than the number of new Covid cases for the the 11th consecutive day.
Among those who attended the virtual meeting are Hardeep Singh Puri, Minister of Civil Aviation, Mansukh Mandaviya, Minister of State for Chemical and Fertilizers, Ashwini Kumar Choubey, Minister of State, Health & Family Welfare and Vinod K Paul, Member (Health), NITI Aayog.
Flagging the issue of rising cases of Mucormycosis, Vardhan said 5424 cases have been reported from 18 states with the greatest number of cases being reported from Gujarat and Maharashtra.
“Out of these, 4556 cases have a history of Covid-19 infection while the rest are non-COVID cases. 55 per cent of the affected had diabetes. As many as 9 lakh vials of Amphotericin-B are being imported by the Central government for treatment of Black Fungus. Of this, 50,000 vials have been received and around 3 lakh vials will be available in next 7 days,” Vardhan said.
India has already provided 19.6 crore doses to its citizens, he noted while adding that over 60 lakh doses are still with the states and further 21 lakh doses are in the pipeline.
Meanwhile, the government has also sent over 70 lakh Remdesivir vials and 45,735 ventilators to states/UTs.
On genome sequencing, Vardhan informed that 25,739 samples have been sequenced and variant B.1.617 has been found in 5,261 samples, making it the most common mutation detected till now. He also said that states have been requested to send samples regularly for better analysis.
During the meeting, the Health Minister also highlighted implementation of the standard operating procedures or SoPs of the Government on Covid management in peri-urban, urban and tribal areas.
Meanwhile, Ashwini Kumar Choubey, Minister of State for Health Ministry, stressed on streamlining availability of 2-DG drug by DRDO, increasing the affordability and availability of home testing kits. He espoused the need that a protocol should be made to streamline supply of mobile/home testing kits in the Country.