Maintain adequate stock of critical drugs, Centre to states

Raising the issue of many ventilators supplied by the Centre lying unpacked and unused at some field hospitals, the Centre has asked the states to review immediately and ensure that all PSA oxygen plants, oxygen concentrators and ventilators are installed and functioning.It has asked the five-fold strategy of Test-Track-Treat-Vaccinate-adherence to Covid Appropriate Behaviour (CAB) to maintain as the mainstay of public health response strategy for effective and timely control and management of Covid and its variants.The states have also been advised to closely monitor the prevalence of influenza-like illness (ILI)/severe acute respiratory infection (SARI) and respiratory distress symptoms in view of winter season.Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan in the review meeting on Omicron urged the states and UTs to enhance testing and focus on surveillance to ensure early identification of the suspected cases for their prompt isolation and further clinical management. The districts reporting higher case positivity were alerted to monitor the case trajectory on a regular basis, and to promptly dispatch positive samples to the mapped INSACOG labs for whole genome sequencing.



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