Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday chaired a meeting to assess the COVID-19 pandemic situation in the country amid a surge in cases and emergence of Omicron variant.
During the meeting, the prime minister stressed on the need to ensure adequate health infrastructure at the district level. He asked officials to maintain co-ordination regarding this with the states, the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) said in a statement.
"A detailed presentation highlighting the surge in cases currently being reported globally was given by Secretary Health. This was followed by the status of COVID-19 in India highlighting various states and districts of concern, based on the surge in cases and high positivity being reported," it said.
During the meeting, various efforts taken by the Central government in terms of supporting states to manage the upcoming challenge were highlighted and various predictive scenarios of peak cases were also presented.
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"The presentation brought attention to India's consistent efforts towards the vaccination campaign, with 31 per cent adolescents aged 15-18 years having been administered with the 1st dose so far within 7 days," it said. Modi called for further accelerating the vaccine drive for adolescents in mission mode. He also asked to take up on mission mode the precaution dose vaccination for healthecare and frontline workers.
The prime minister also highlighted the need to ensure effective usage of masks and physical distancing measures as a new normal to control the spread, and called for effective implementation of home isolation for mild/ asymptomatic cases and to disseminate the factual information to the community at large.
He also said that a meeting with chief ministers should be convened to discuss state-specific scenarios, best-practices and the public health response, the release said.
"PM also spoke about the importance for continuous scientific research in testing , vaccines and pharmacological interventions including genome sequencing given that the virus is evolving continuously," it said.
The meeting was attended by Home Minister Amit Shah, Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya, Minister of State for Health Bharati Pravin Pawar, NITI Aayog's V K Paul, ICMR DG Balram Bhargava, among others.
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