NEW DELHI: With humongous clusters of close to 400 Parliament employees and 150 Supreme Court registry officials and staff members testing positive for Covid, Prime Minister Narendra Modi held a review meet on Sunday and stressed the need to take area specific measures, besides accelerating vaccination of the adolescent age group.
Modi will soon resume regular interactions with chief ministers for specific interventions to manage the pandemic, as he did during the second wave last year. “PM said that a meeting with CMs be convened to discuss state-specific scenarios, best practices and the public health response,” the PMO said in a statement after the meeting, which was also attended by Union ministers Amit Shah and Mansukh Mandaviya and top health experts.
The interactions with chief ministers will likely be with high incidence states. In Parliament, 65 staffers of Rajya Sabha Secretariat, 200 of Lok Sabha Secretariat and 133 of allied services tested positive between January 4-8, sources said. As for the Supreme Court, a few judges, too, have been found infected.
Meanwhile, the Centre will start administering booster doses to healthcare and frontline workers, and comorbid people in the 60-plus age group from Monday. Since the model code of conduct is now in place in five poll-bound states, Modi’s photo will be filtered out of vaccination certificates issued there.
At the meeting with Modi, a detailed presentation was made on the status of Covid-19 in India, including areas of concerns with respect to states and districts with high positivity rates, the statement said. Delhi’s positivity rate on Sunday climbed to 23.53% with 17 Covid deaths and 22,751 new cases in a day. The Rajasthan government tightened its restrictions, ordering closure of schools in urban areas and other measures, including announcing Sunday curfew like in Tamil Nadu.