After having reviewed the Covid-19 situation in differentstates of the country during the high-level meeting held on Sunday morning, thePrime Minister Narendra Modi has now directed high level multi-disciplinarypublic health teams to visit Maharashtra, Punjab and Chhattisgarh in view ofsurge in the number of new Covid-19 cases as well deaths being consistentlyreported by these states.
The teams are being deployed to assist the state healthdepartments in Covid-19 surveillance, control and containment measures.
These teams will interact with the authorities and get afirst hand understanding of the challenges and issues being faced by them so asto strengthen their ongoing activities and remove the bottlenecks, if any.
The country has been recording an unabated spike in casesfor over three weeks. Daily cases in the country peaked on September 16, 2020,with 97,894 people testing positive for the virus in a single day.
Besides, it was highlighted in the meeting that Maharashtra,Punjab and Chhattisgarh are the states of grave concern as the percentage ofnew cases being contributed by these states stand at 57 of the total cases,while 47 percent of deaths in the country are too from these states in the last14 days.
Moreover, the Punjab has contributed 4.5 percent of thetotal cases in the country in the same period but has accounted for 16.3percent of the total deaths, which is again a matter of serious concern.
Meanwhile, all senior officers including CabinetSecretary Rajiv Gauba, Principal Secretary to PM P.K. Mishra, Health SecretaryRajesh Bhushan, and Vinod Paul, NITI Aayog member and chairman of government'sempowered group on Covid management participated in the meeting.