COVID 19: Health Ministry stresses on the need to stop chain of transmission

New Delhi, March 22 :

Health Ministry Sunday stressed on the need to stop the chain of transmission of COVID 19. Briefing media in New Delhi this evening, Joint Secretary in the Ministry, Lav Aggarwal said, many measures are being taken to break the chain of transmission. Central government has asked state governments to issue directions to the 75 districts that have positive cases to stop all services except the emergency services. These districts include  Lucknow, Ghaziabad, Agra, Varanasi, Kolkata, Dehradun, Jaipur, Chennai, Pune, Mumbai, Nagpur, Thiruvanthpuram, Kottayam. Erankulam, Bangaluru, Srinagar, Jammu , Faridabad, Ahemdabad, Gandhinagar, Vadodara, Delhi, Chandigarh, Vijayawada.

All train services including sub-urban and metro services, interstate passenger transports are suspended till 31st of March.

Indian Council of Medical Research Director-General, Balram Bhargava said, the easiest method to break the chain of transmission is to isolate the people coming from outside. He said, the virus is not present in the air, and it can be transmitted through droplets released. Mr Bhargava elaborated that 80 percent of the people who are affected will experience cold-like fever and they will recover. Twenty percent may experience cough, cold, fever and some of them may need to be admitted to hospital. Mr Bhargava added that the 5 percent who get admitted to the hospital are given supportive treatment and in some cases, new medicines are being given.

He said, government has done 16 to 17 thousand tests already and India has the capacity to perform 50 to 70 thousand tests a week. There are 111 government labs and more private labs are also being enabled which further have many collection centers. He said, government is getting private labs on board. A draft of guidelines for private labs has been approved and 60 private labs have already registered