New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday held a meeting to review India's vaccination strategy in which issues like prioritisation of population groups and tech platform for rolling out vaccine for the Coronavirus were discussed.
Modi tweeted that the meeting discussed important issues related to the progress of vaccine development, regulatory approvals and procurement.
"Reviewed various issues like prioritisation of population groups, reaching out to HCWs (health care workers), cold-chain Infrastructure augmentation, adding vaccinators and tech platform for vaccine roll-out," he said. A number of COVID-19 vaccine candidates are in advanced phases of trial.
While interacting with the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) via a video link, Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said a digital platform used in the Universal Immunisation Programme was being repurposed to digitally track movement of stocks of COVID-19 vaccines, once available, and also trace those who will receive the shots thus ensuring last-mile vaccine delivery.
He mentioned that under Mission Indradhanush, the government has already ramped up its immunisation capability with an elaborate cold storage chain for inoculating children from 12 diseases.
Meanwhile, India's COVID-19 caseload surpassed the 90-lakh mark on Friday with 45,882 new cases, while the recoveries surged to 84.28 lakh pushing the national recovery rate to 93.6 per cent.
The total Coronavirus cases mounted to 90,04,365 and the death toll climbed to 1,32,162 with the novel coronavirus virus claiming 584 lives in a span of 24 hours in the country, the data updated by Health Minsitry at 8 am showed.
The COVID-19 case fatality rate has further declined to 1.46 per cent.There are 4,43,794 active cases of coronavirus infection in the country which comprises 4.92 per cent of the total caseload, the data stated.
According to the ICMR, a cumulative total of 12,95,91,786 samples have been tested up to November 20 with 10,83,397 samples being tested on Thursday.
Meanwhile, to curb the spike in Coronavirus cases, the Gujarat government on Friday decided to impose night curfew between 9:00 pm and 6:00 am in Surat, Vadodara and Rajkot cities from November 21. The announcement came as a 57-hour-long weekend curfew came into effect from 9 pm in Ahmedabad city, which will end at 6 am on November 23. The government has already announced a night curfew in Ahmedabad from November 23.
Following the suit, the Madhya Pradesh government too imposed a night curfew in 5 cities- Indore, Bhopal, Gwalior, Ratlam and Vidisha- starting November 21.
The curfew will be in force from 10 pm to 6 am, officials said. This was told during a meeting chaired by Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan on Friday evening to review the COVID-19 situation after a spurt in infection cases, especially in Indore and Bhopal. State health minister Prabhuram Choudhary, home minister Narottam Mishra and district collectors attended the meeting.