Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Delhi, Telangana, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal account for 85.5% of the active case load and 87% of the total deaths in India, the Health Ministry said on Saturday.
At present, 15 Central teams of public health experts, epidemiologists, clinicians and an officer of the rank of Joint Secretary have been deployed to give technical support to the States.
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The 17th meeting of the high-level Group of Ministers (GoM) on COVID-19 was held on Saturday under the chairmanship of Health Minister Harsh Vardhan. The GOM was briefed about the status of COVID-19 cases, the recovery, mortality and doubling rates, the increased testing capacity and the strengthened healthcare infrastructure in the States.
The Health Ministry said another Central team was visiting Gujarat, Maharashtra and Telangana to strengthen the efforts to manage the disease.
In his presentation, K. Shivaji, chairman of the Empowered Group-10, said the stipulated redress time for COVID-19 grievances was brought down from the usual 60 days for normal public grievances to three days. The national dashboard for COVID-19 was launched on April 1 for exclusive monitoring of the disease. During the period from March 30 to June 24, the Empowered Group disposed of 93.84% of the 77,307 grievances received by the Central Ministries and 63.11% of the 53,130 grievances pertaining to the State governments, he said.
Balram Bhragava, Director-General, Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), gave a detailed presentation on the testing strategy. The samples tested in the last 24 hours had increased to 2,20,479, taking the total number of samples tested so far to 79,96,707. India now has 1026 diagnostic laboratories, including 741 in the government sector and 285 in the private sector, he said.
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“The GoM was also informed about the medical infrastructure in the country, and currently there is an availability of 1,039 dedicated COVID hospitals with 1,76,275 isolation beds, 22,940 ICU beds and 77,268 oxygen-supported beds; 2,398 dedicated COVID health centres with 1,39,483 isolation beds, 11,539 ICU beds and 51,321 oxygen-supported beds have also been operationalised. Moreover, 8,958 COVID care centres with 8,10,621 beds are now available... The Centre has also provided 185.18 lakh N95 masks and 116.74 lakh personal protective equipment to the States/Union Territories/Central institutions,” the Ministry said.
