Amid a surge in COVID-19 cases in India again, Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya held a review meeting on Friday with state health ministers and principal and additional chief secretaries virtually and advised states to be alert and prepared.
Mandaviya urged the state health ministers to conduct mock drills of all hospital infrastructure on April 10 and 11 and review the health preparedness with district administrations and health officials on April 8 and 9.
COVID-19 cases in India
The meeting comes on the day when the fresh COVID-19 cases in India stood at 6,050, the highest in 203 days, and the active cases increased to 28,303, data shared by the union health ministry showed.
With 14 deaths due to the virus, the toll increased to 5,30,943. Three deaths were reported from Maharashtra, two each from Karnataka and Rajasthan, one from Delhi, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab and Kerala.
The health minister also stressed on identifying emergency hotspots by monitoring trends of influenza-like illness (ILI) and severe acute respiratory infection (SARI) cases, ramping up testing and vaccination and ensuring readiness of hospital infrastructure. He also asked to enhance genome sequencing and ramp up whole genome sequencing of positive samples.
He also asked to create awareness for following COVID-19-appropriate behaviour.
Meanwhile, Union Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare, Dr Bharati Pravin Pawar, on Friday, said that Centre has been issuing guidelines to states and UTs regularly in view of the spike in Covid cases.
Further, the Puducherry administration on Friday made wearing of masks compulsory in the union territory with immediate effect.