VisionIAS
17:24
📰 PM asks States to suggest plan for staggered end to lockdown
‘Appoint disease surveillance officers in all districts, collate data from private labs’
•Prime Minister Narendra Modi, at his second videoconference with Chief Ministers, on Thursday told them that it was “important to formulate a common exit strategy to ensure staggered re-emergence of the population once the lockdown ends”.
•Mr. Modi emphasised that the collective goal of all should be to “save every Indian”. He asked the States to brainstorm and send suggestions for the exit strategy.
•He listed certain “must do steps” that need to be taken as the nation entered the second week of the total lockdown. “Our first priority for the next few weeks should be testing, tracing, isolating and quarantine. For this, all State to district level efforts must be coordinated,” he pointed out.
•Mr. Modi urged that district-level disease surveillance officers should be appointed as soon as possible to make sure that penetration of this strategy is optimum. Data collected from private laboratories allowed to test should be collated district-wise to be utilised for further strategising on tackling the pandemic.
•In his opening remarks, he emphasised that the supply lines for medical equipment and drugs and raw materials needed for the manufacture of these products need to be kept seamless, even more than supplies of other products.
Separate hospitals
•“Every State should ensure that there are separate hospitals for COVID-19 patients, and the doctors attending to them need to be protected. I would also urge you to step up online training of doctors in the treatment of COVID-19,” he said.
•This being the harvest season in many parts of the country, farmers and labourers, exempted from the lockdown, were engaged in harvest operations and they should maintain some physical distancing even on fields. “As for procurement, we must find ways to do it beyond the route of Agricultural Produce Marketing Committees (APMC). A truck pooling scheme should also be worked out with farmers for ferrying produce to the market. Harvesting will possibly need to be done in a staggered manner,” he is reported to have said.
•The Centre would release Rs. 11,000 crore from the State Disaster Relief Fund by this month, and it should be used for efforts to fight the COVID-19 pandemic.
