NEW DELHI: Eleven states and Union Territories have been earmarked as “states of grave concern” on account of their rising daily Covid-19 cases and higher daily deaths, Cabinet Secretary Rajiv Gauba underlined at a meeting with states on Friday.
These states/UTs Maharashtra, Punjab, Chhattisgarh, Karnataka, Kerala, Chandigarh, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Delhi and Haryana contributed 90% of the total cases, as on Wednesday, and 90.5% of deaths in the last 14 days, and have crossed or are close to crossing their early reported peaks during last year.
It was pointed out that the situation was particularly worrying in Maharashtra, Punjab and Chhattisgarh. Maharashtra was advised to take up immediate and high effective measures to ensure containment of active cases and daily deaths through adherence of the standard clinical management protocol shared earlier with all states.
Another worrisome aspect pointed out was that tier 2 and tier 3 cities along with peri-urban areas have been recording the recent spike. That the spread of infection from these to rural areas with weak health infrastructure would overwhelm the local administration was also highlighted at the meeting.
States were instructed to follow several measures to bring down daily fatalities, which included increasing the number of isolation beds, oxygen beds, ventilators and ICU beds and planning for adequate oxygen supply. They were also asked to strengthen ambulance service and reduce response time and refusal rate with regular monitoring by local administration
Gauba also told the chief secretaries and other senior state authorities that the administration should review case fatality rate hospital-wise, devise appropriate strategy and mitigate concerns regarding late admission in hospitals and non-adherence to national clinical management protocol.