Union Health Minister urges States to ensure no unnecessary stigma is attached to COVID-19

Union Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan on Friday urged State Health Ministers to ensure that no unnecessary stigma is attached to COVID-19. In a video conference with them, Dr Vardhan urged them to ensure that no unnecessary stigma is attached to COVID-19 and said that we need to identify people having COVID-19 and treat them.

"The Union Health Minister has requested the States to focus on districts reporting the high number of cases or having a fast case doubling rate or districts with high rate of mortality," he said.

Agarwal said that Dr Vardhan has suggested the Red Cross Society coordinate with the recovered COVID-19 patients, who can be mobilised for blood donation, from which convalescent plasma could be used for transfusion to COVID-19 patients for early recovery.

"The Union Health Minister also interacted with Health Ministers of all member countries of the World Health Organisation (WHO) and shared India's journey so far. He highlighted that India's management efforts are based on twin principles of community engagement and containment effort," said Agarwal.

Furthermore, Agarwal informed that Dr Vardhan has also announced 'COVID-19 Sewa' twitter handle which provides authentic and real-time information to the public.

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Developments to fight COVID-19 in India

The Health Minister earlier also noted that the country had only one laboratory for testing COVID-19 samples back in January, but today India has more than 130 labs and 16,000 collection centres.

The Union Health Minister also said that nearly 15.25 lakh passengers have been screened at airports to date. Along with this, 2,544 Indians and 49 foreign nationals have been brought back to India. The country has a capacity of testing 55,000 samples each day and it aims to ramp up the capacity by one lakh test per day. He noted that rapid testing has begun on symptomatic patients in containment zones.

The Health Minister added that India is committed to creating COVID-19 exclusive hospitals to avoid mingling of other patients with Coronavirus patients.

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India tries to flatten the curve

In a major boost to India's battle against COVID-19, Union Joint Health Secretary Lav Agarwal, on Thursday, stated that India's recovery rate has increased to 19.89%. Moreover, he added that the country witnessed a growth of 1409 cases in the past 24 hours and the tally stands at 21,393 cases. Moreover, he revealed that 78 districts have not reported a single COVID-19 case in the past 14 days.

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(with inputs from ANI)