WHO lauds India’s fight against in COVID-19

iNDICA NEWS Bureau-

On Saturday, coronavirus cases in India have gone up to 6,48,315 after 22,771 new cases were reported in a span of 24 hours. This is the highest spike in new positive cases so far since the beginning.

The current total of active cases now stands at 2,35,433. Out of the total cases, 3,94,227 have recovered from the disease. The recovery rate now stands at 60.8%. According to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, 2,42,383 tests were conducted on Friday.

India is trying to fast track the development of an indigenous COVID-19 vaccine with two local companies set to commence clinical trials.

The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has asked state-run vaccine maker Bharat Biotech India Ltd to expedite the clinical trials of its COVID-19 vaccine Covaxin and has set a launch deadline of 15 August. But according to many health experts, this deadline is touted to be unrealistic and inhumane.

India’s big challenge is “population”, its geographic diversity, heterogeneity and the fact that India has multiple epidemics going on every state, said WHO.

It appreciated the Indian government’s strong political leadership to focus on important things like developing diagnostics and being able to scale that up, also being very systematic about the lockdown measures and unlocking in an organized manner.

“Early detection and timely clinical management of COVID-19 cases have resulted in increasing daily recoveries,” the Indian Ministry of Health and Family Welfare said on Friday.

“Coordinated efforts at all levels of government for prevention, containment and management of COVID-19 are showing good results with consistently increasing gap between Recoveries and Active cases. As on date, there are 1,52,452 recovered cases more than the active COVID-19 cases,” it said.

Dr Soumya Swaminathan, Chief Scientist at WHO, highlighted that healthcare system should also provide other services. “We cannot just focus on COVID-19 alone because we have other health problems in the country. Otherwise, those healt problems such as TB, vaccine-preventable diseases like measles, institutional deliveries, elective surgeries and rehabilitation may get worse than COVID-19. So those things have to be brought back to normal and capacity of the healthcare system has to be increased,” she said.