‘Under PM Modi, the Centre got active at all levels once the pandemic was discovered’.
New Delhi: Not a single day was wasted by the Government of India on deciding what it had to do to stop the spread of Covid 19 in India, once the pandemic reached India’s gates, Union minister of health Ashwini Kumar Choubey has told The Sunday Guardian.
Choubey said that when things become normal and the threat of Covid-19 is eliminated, the quick and hard decisions that India took would become a topic of study for the international audience on how a country of more than 135 crore people tackled such a deadly disease.
“There was no standard operating procedure for something as ‘huge’ as this. The last pandemic that the world had witnessed had taken place more than 100 years ago. It was Prime Minister Narendra Modi who realised that only quick actions can stop Covid-19 from causing destruction in this country of more than 135 crore. When the PM announced to go for a complete lockdown on 24 March, we did not have even 600 positive cases, which shows how proactively our government acted to stop its spread. If we had wasted even a single day, the result would have been catastrophic. The immaculate level of coordination among different departments, ministries and arms of the government, the smooth process of issuing of directions and guidelines to the state governments, was just phenomenal,” Choubey told The Sunday Guardian.
According to him, the Central government under PM Modi got active at all levels once the pandemic was discovered. “We had to take care of medicine, logistics, quarantine, coordination with the state governments to restrict the spread, testing and even if one of these cog in the wheel broke, our whole efforts would have wasted resulting in the spread of the pandemic even more,” he recalled.
While responding to The Sunday Guardian’s query on whether there was enough number of ventilators available in the country to deal with the worst case scenario, Choubey said that there was no shortage of either ventilators or medicines, testing kits or the PPEs. “We are very well prepared for every eventuality,” he said.
Commenting on the increasing number of Covid-19 patients in the country, Choubey said that the numbers was showing an increasing trend because the number of testing has been increased exponentially. “This number will stabilise soon. We have been able to contain the spread,” Choubey said.
Recalling the initial days when the pandemic broke, Choubey said India was among the first country that started screening at the airports to identify Covid-19 positives. “Immediately, an empowered Group of Ministers was formed which is taking quick decisions. A hard decision like lockdown was taken without delay. The GoM has met for 12 times till now. State health minister and health secretaries were taken on board for detailed discussion. Every day, a coordination committee meeting is happening so that we do not miss out on anything. Please be assured that we are taking quick and hard decisions every day,” Choubey said.