‘If these 10 states beat Covid, India can win’: PM Modi to chief ministers
Nitish Kumar (Bihar), Yogi Adityanath (UP), Mamata Banerjee (West Bengal), Tamil Nadu’s EK Palaniswami, K Chandrasekhar Rao of Telangana, Maharashtra’s Uddhav Thackeray, Amarinder Singh of Punjab and Gujarat’s Vijay Rupani were the chief ministers who attended the meeting.
India’s victory against the Covid-19 pandemic now depends on the performance of 10 states that account for 80% of active cases, Prime Minister Narendra Modi told a group of chief ministers during a virtual meeting on Tuesday.
With more than 22.68 lakh crore cases in India till Monday, Modi gave the examples of Delhi, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh to underline how the situation can be improved. He emphasised the need for greater cooperation between states and the Centre for more effective Covid-19 management.
He also said the government’s efforts are showing results.
Nitish Kumar (Bihar), Yogi Adityanath (UP), Mamata Banerjee (West Bengal), Tamil Nadu’s EK Palaniswami, K Chandrasekhar Rao of Telangana, Maharashtra’s Uddhav Thackeray, Amarinder Singh of Punjab and Gujarat’s Vijay Rupani were the chief ministers who attended the meeting. Defence minister Rajnath Singh too joined the meeting.
“In some districts of Delhi, Haryana and UP, Covid-19 had posed a major problem at some stage. Then we had a review meeting and an expert committee chaired by home minister Amit Shah was constituted. As a result, we were able to achieve almost everything that we wanted to,” Modi told the chief ministers.
In Delhi, Shah’s panel stepped up testing and sero-surveillance, redefined containment zones, and took several other measures to improve the situation.
While Modi underlined that containment, contact tracing and surveillance hold the key in the battle against the Coronavirus, he said that once infected persons are detected, there is an urgent need to diagnose people who may have been infected by them within the next 72 hours.
Modi hailed the effort of states and maintained that they can play an important role in the country’s battle against Covid-19.
He pointed out that the average fatality rate, or death rate for Covid-19 patients is continuously going down while the rate of recovery is increasing with each passing day, adding that the government’s efforts are showing results.
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