Centre promises to provide more Oxygen and Ventilators to the worst hit states UP and Chhattisgarh: Union Health Secretary

New Delhi: Union Home Secretary Ajay Kumar Bhalla held a meeting with Rajesh Bhushan, Union Health Secretary, today to review the status of COVID19 in Chhattisgarh and Uttar Pradesh and the public health measures taken for containment and management of COVID19 by the State health authorities.

After the high level meeting, the ministry said that the government promised to provide more Oxygen and Ventilators to the concerned states. Furthermore, The States were advised to increase the number of isolation beds, oxygen beds, ventilators/ICU beds, ambulance fleet as per requirement; plan for adequate oxygen supply; and focus on mortality reduction by early identification of positive cases and adherence to national treatment protocol.

In the meeting, Dr V K Paul, Member (Health), NITI Aayog, Dr. Balram Bhargava, DG ICMR, Dr (Prof) Sunil Kumar, DGHS were also present along with Chief Secretaries, DG (police), and Health Secretaries of both States.

While reviewing, the Ministry said that Uttar Pradesh has reported a growth rate of 19.25% in daily new cases. 46 districts in Uttar Pradesh have crossed their reported highest cases in the last 30 days; Lucknow, Kanpur, Varanasi and Prayagraj are the most affected districts.

Chhattisgarh has reported nearly 6.2% increase in weekly new COVID cases based on 7 day moving average. In last two weeks, the State has seen almost 131% increase in weekly new cases.

Chhattisgarh and Uttar Pradesh along with Maharashtra are the only three States in the country which have more than one lakh Active Cases. Both Chhattisgarh and Uttar Pradesh are reporting very high number of daily new COVID19 cases and high deaths caused by COVID-19.