Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday strongly urged the States to conduct proactive testing and strengthen governance in the next two to three weeks, which has been quite lax during the ongoing second wave of Covid pandemic.
Modi asked all States to organise ‘Tika Utsav’ between April 11 and 14 to ensure that maximum number of people are inoculated. He said there is a need to ramp up testing so that case the positivity rate can be brought down below 5 per cent.
The second wave is faster than the previous one and there is an upsurge in States such as Maharashtra, Gujarat, Punjab, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. It is a matter of serious concern and there is a need to prevent further spread, Modi told States, urging that there is also a need to focus on micro-containment zones to stop the surge.
“We have to lay emphasis on ‘test, track, treat’ Covid appropriate behaviour and Covid management. Solution is proactive testing, so that home quarantine can be exercised effectively. We have to bring positive cases below 5 per cent”.
He reiterated that vaccination should not be taken lightly, and even after getting the jabs, people should not be casual. Those above 45 must be given shots and the target of contact tracing should not be less than 30 people in 72 hours.
“Our target is to do 70 per cent RT-PCR tests. Let the number of positive cases be high, but do maximum testing. Proper sample collection is very important and it can be checked through proper governance,” Modi said.
‘Corona curfew’
Modi also endorsed night curfew and requested the states to rename night curfew as ‘corona curfew’. “The world has accepted the concept of night curfew; it reminds people they are living in the corona times. It would be good to start this corona curfew around 9 pm and end it early morning,” Modi said.
Meanwhile, the cumulative number of Covid-19 vaccine doses administered has crossed 9 crore on Thursday with 9,40,96,689 shots given till 8 pm. A total of 34,73,083 vaccine shots were given on Thursday till 8 pm. This is the second consecutive day when the country reported the sharpest rise in cases, pushing the Thursday tally to 1,26,789 infections till 8:00 am. India's total Covid tally is 1,29,28,574, of which the total recoveries are 1,18,51393; active cases are at 9,10,319 and the death toll has increased to 1,66,862 with 685 deaths reported in the last 24 hours.