Full-scale COVID-19 mock drill in state today
Source: Chronicle News Service

Imphal, December 26 2022: With the sudden surge of COVID-19 cases in countries like China, Japan, Korea and the United States, preparation has been made for a full-scale mock drill to prevent another wave of the pandemic.

The mock drill will be conducted through out the state on Tuesday with preparedness review meeting with participation by representatives from all the districts held on Monday under chairmanship of additional chief secretary (health) Vumlunmang Vualnam.

During the review meeting, Vumlunmang instructed all the representatives of the districts to arrange health infrastructure properly so that health officials, workers, security personnel, NGOs and volunteers can take part in the state wide COVID-19 mock drill.

Though the new COVID-19 variant BF-7 cases have alarmingly surged in many developed countries, the cases in India are still low while Manipur has been free from the infectious disease for the past few days.

Nevertheless, the government of India has instructed all the states to conduct mock drill so that the country could deal with the new wave effectively, Vumlunmang Vualnam added.

During a press briefing few days back, health minister Dr S Ranjan had clarified that the mock drill is being planned by state government as a preparedness to tackle another wave of the pandemic effectively and appealed to people not to panic.

COVID-19 vaccination being undertaken by the government to prevent the pandemic is very low in hill districts of the state.

Even though first dose COVID-19 vaccine had been given to 62.5 percent of the state's population, second dose to 54.9 percent and booster doses to 2,79,099 eligible citizens, only 20.86 percent of the population in hill districts have taken the vaccine so far.

In order to prevent the disease, it is important for people to strictly follow COVID-19 behaviours, stop public gathering and foreign travel and get the COVID-19 vaccine, he said and appealed to people having cold or fever to follow government guidelines strictly.

According to Vumlunmang Vualnam, the government has instructed all relevant officials to install adequate health infrastructures, maintain medicines stock and ready for sending samples of new cases for genome sequencing.

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