Dr Harsh Vardhan cautions states about winters, festivities during Covid19 review meet

Vardhan said the trajectory of the disease was being monitored personally by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

"The prime minister has held intense discussions with all chief ministers and Head of UTs. His latest address was only of 10 minutes but had the important message of continued adherence to COVID-appropriate behavior and its transformation to a Jan Andolan (people's movement)."

Sharing the nation's journey in the fight against the pandemic, he said the number of laboratories increased from one in January to 2,074 now and the testing capacity has increased to 1.5 million daily.

The Union health minister also spoke about the increased number of general, oxygenated, and ICU beds at each level of the COVID care hierarchy.

Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan requested all States to focus on 10 key areas to contain the infection and gain an upper hand over its trajectory.

These are increasing testing, targeted testing at market-places, workplaces, religious congregations which could have the potential to become super-spreaders, increasing the share of RT-PCR in testing, compulsory testing of symptomatic RAT negatives, completion of contact tracing within the first 72 hours, tracing of an average of 10-15 contacts per new case detected.

National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) Director Sujeet K Singh apprised everybody on the trajectory of the coronavirus disease and the public health response efforts in the states.

The State Health Ministers shared a brief snapshot of the actions taken for containment, surveillance, and treatment of COVID-19 cases.

Also Read: Next Three Months Decisive In Determining COVID-19 Situation In Country: Dr Harsh Vardhan