After having reviewed the Covid-19 situation in different states of the country during the high-level meeting held on Sunday morning, the Prime Minister Narendra Modi has now directed high level multi-disciplinary public health teams to visit Maharashtra, Punjab and Chhattisgarh in view of surge in the number of new Covid-19 cases as well deaths being consistently reported by these states.
The teams are being deployed to assist the state health departments in Covid-19 surveillance, control and containment measures.
These teams will interact with the authorities and get a first hand understanding of the challenges and issues being faced by them so as to strengthen their ongoing activities and remove the bottlenecks, if any.
The country has been recording an unabated spike in cases for 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 of new 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 last 14 days.
Moreover, the Punjab has contributed 4.5 percent of the total cases in the country in the same period but has accounted for 16.3 percent of the total deaths, which is again a matter of serious concern.
Meanwhile, all senior officers including Cabinet Secretary Rajiv Gauba, Principal Secretary to PM P.K. Mishra, Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan, and Vinod Paul, NITI Aayog member and chairman of government's empowered group on Covid management participated in the meeting.