India steps up its strike against Covid-19

Amidst the rapidly surging cases of coronavirus in the country, (over 4000 as on Monday morning), India is drawing some lessons from the mistakes of global hotspots like Italy and Iran & stepping up its strike against Covid-19. The plan encompasses focusing sharply on states, cities and districts that need immediate attention and to ensure adequate arrangements are made for government and private hospitals, quarantine facilities, isolation beds, intensive care units (ICUs), ventilators and personal protective equipment to combat a surge in infections.

Hospitals across India’s hotspot districts are being assessed “to understand readiness and required interventions to respond to current and near future patient load”, according to a covid-19 war room document.

In addition to expand its testing facilities to enable rapid testing and isolation of positive cases; the government has readied 124,294 isolation beds, 29,810 ICU beds, 14,947 ventilators, 650,190 N95 masks and 295,102 PPEs. Further, it has also launched apps such as Aarogya Setu to help track coronavirus infections by using the smartphone’s GPS system in determining if one has been near a covid-19 infected person or not. The domestic manufacturing of personal protection equipment for the healthcare workers and medical devices, especially ventilators, has also been augmented.