Prime Minister Narendra Modi will hold a meeting with chief ministers of states and union territories on Tuesday via video conferencing, news agency ANI reported.
At the meeting, the prime minister is expected to review the situation in worst affected states, which include – Delhi, Maharashtra, Kerala, West Bengal and Rajasthan – and have been witnessing a spike in the number of Covid-19 cases and emerged as new hotspots.
As four vaccine candidates in India are in either the second or the third phase of clinical trials, vaccine distribution and emergency authorisation are also likely to be discussed with the states.
At a recently held meeting of the Niti Aayog, issues like emergency authorisation, advance procurement, pricing of vaccines were discussed – a development that comes after Pfizer and Moderna have said they would seek emergency authorisation of their vaccines, which have proved around 95% efficacy in the trials.
This meet by PM Modi is among the several conducted to review the handling of disease outbreak by states, and come up with a strategy for reducing burden on public health infrastructure.
The Centre has been leading the fight against Covid-19 in the country in effective collaboration and close coordination with the states. The central government is supporting them to ramp up the healthcare and medical infrastructure.
As of Monday, India’s Covid-19 caseload went past 91 lakh with 44,059 coronavirus infections being reported in a day, while the recoveries surged to 85,62,641, according to the Union Health Ministry data. There are 4,43,486 active cases of coronavirus infection in the country as on date which comprises 4.85 per cent of the total caseload, the data stated.
For 16 days now, India has been registering less than 50,000 Covid-19 cases daily.
