Vardhan reviews State's COVID-19 situation
Source: The Sangai Express / DIPR

Imphal, November 11 2020: Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan with Chief Ministers and Health Ministers of seven States reviewed the COVID-19 situation in Manipur, Maharashtra, Uttarakhand, Mizoram, Meghalaya, Tripura and Goa today.

Attending the video conference, Chief Minister N Biren Singh thanked the Central Government for extending all possible help to the State in combating the pandemic since the past 10 months.

With assistance from the Centre, he said, the State has received 95 ventilators, 400 oxygen concentrated machines and 500 D-Type oxygen cylinders recently.

Stating that the State Government was earlier concerned about the rise in the mortality rate, the Chief Minister said that it (mortality) is "slowly coming down" now after a technical expert committee was formed to look into the matter.

In the beginning, the Chief Minister said, Manipur was doing extremely well in containing the virus.

However, the State started witnessing sudden hike of Covid positive cases after thousands of native Manipuris were brought back in Shramik Special trains from cities across the country, he informed.

Maintaining that the testing rate has been improved for early detection of positive cases, the Chief Minister said that 3,72,000 samples had been tested so far.

The current testing rate per day per million population of Manipur is quite higher than the National average, he added.

In order to reduce the transmission rate, the State Government is focusing on imparting awareness at the grassroots level.

For this, village level committees have been formed, and local clubs, organizations, NGOs, etc have been roped in to get them involved in creating awareness to make people follow the SOPs strictly.

The main objective of the initiative is to gain momentum of the Jan Andolan campaign against COVID-19 and promote the COVED Appropriate Behaviour (CAB) .

RIMS being a major and most important hospital of the State, the Chief Minister requested the Union Health Minister to permit flexibility in the fund utilization so that the hospital may meet the urgent needs and cope with the challenges that emerge from time to time in combating the virus.

Informing the Health Minister that manpower and equipment inadequacies of the Central Government-run hospital are even sometimes fulfilled with the funds from the State Government considering the urgency, the Chief Minister said that he would list all the requirements of the hospital in detail in a letter to the Union Health Minister.

N Biren Singh also invited Dr Harsh Vardhan in advance to attend the Golden Jubilee celebration of RIMS to be held next year.

The Chief Minister also requested him to entrust the responsibility of the construction of the National Centre for Disease Control to the State Government.

Dr Harsh Vardhan also assured N Biren Singh to look into the matters raised during the video conference.

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