Aditi Tandon
New Delhi, December 31
Ahead of RT-PCR reports of arrivals from China, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, Japan and Hong Kong being made mandatory from Sunday, the Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister held a high-level review meeting with top government officials to take stock of preparedness in the event of a surge.
PK Mishra, Principal Secretary to PM, chaired the review meeting with senior officials and was apprised of the evolving global scenario of the pandemic with spikes in some countries, including China, Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Brazil.
The top PMO official was told that so far 1,716 international flights had been screened, with 5,666 samples collected. Of these, 54 travellers tested positive which is a positivity rate of 0.94 pc. The sample collection is part of the 2 pc random sampling of international arrivals.
Also, it was discussed that more than 220 crore doses of COVID vaccine have been administered so far with 102.56 crore first doses (97%) and 95.13 crore second doses (90%) administered to eligible beneficiaries.
Experts present at the meeting also discussed issues regarding research of vaccines and their manufacturing in India besides taking note of recent scale-up of whole genome sequencing efforts to detect any potential new Covid 19 variants.
“Nearly 500 samples collected during December are being whole genome sequenced at the central lab network,” officials said.
The meeting focused on continued push to surveillance as advised by Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya in his review with state counterparts recently.
“The focus of discussions also was on enhancing awareness about COVID appropriate behaviour, ramping up of testing and uptake of COVID-19 precautionary doses,” sources said.
The meeting took stock of Covid mock drills across over 2,000 hospitals in India this week to test the operational readiness of COVID dedicated facilities with proper mapping of availability of Oxygen Plants, Ventilators, logistics and human resources.
“As many as 21,097 facilities conducted the mock drill, of which 16,108 were government facilities,” Mishra was informed.
The meeting also noted the revision of International Travel Guidelines Arrivals on December 29, whereby all international arrivals from China, Singapore, Hong Kong, Republic of Korea, Thailand and Japan will undergo mandatory pre-departure RT-PCR testing (to be conducted in 72 hours prior to undertaking the journey).
Air Suvidha Portal has been made operational with a provision to allow passengers to submit and upload negative RT-PCR test reports as well as to submit self-declaration forms.
Mishra was told that monitoring of cases of severe acute respiratory illness, influenza-like Illness and similar diseases to identify early warning signals had started in states, and a weekly report for the same is being sent by states to the Union Health Ministry.
Meanwhile, official sources said pharma companies had been told to keep a close watch on global supply chain scenarios and ensure adequate stocks and availability of all drugs, including COVID drugs.
Besides, the Ministry of Commerce is monitoring ongoing exports of medicinal products and equipment to China, sources said.