Union Health Minister Mandaviya To Hold Review Meeting On Covid-19 With 5 States

The agenda of the virtual meeting will be to review the covid-19 situation, public preparedness, and preventive measures being taken by the states in the context of the Omicron variant-led third wave.

Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya (Getty Images)

New Delhi: Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya will hold a review meeting with health ministers of five states at 3 PM today. The meeting will be attended by ministers from Bihar, Odisha, Jharkhand, West Bengal, and Chhattisgarh.

The agenda of the virtual meeting will be to review the covid-19 situation, public preparedness, and preventive measures being taken by the states in the context of the Omicron variant-led third wave of coronavirus. 

The meeting comes amid the slow decline of cases in various states and the infection graph is plateauing on a national level. However, there are still regions that are reporting more than a 10 percent positivity rate which makes it necessary to not lower the guard against the virus.

Earlier, the Health Minister had held a review meeting with five other states and union territories on Friday. The participant states and UTs that joined the meeting with Mandaviya were Kerala, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Puducherry, Andaman & Nicobar Islands, and Lakshadweep.

Mandaviya had emphasised setting up telecommunication centers that will be useful even after the pandemic is over, and focusing on home isolation cases as caution can reduce the chances of cluster formations. 

Monitoring home isolation cases is necessary as there are more such cases in this wave, he added while advising the states to follow the National guidelines.

He also said that the ‘Test-Track-Treat-Vaccinate & Adherence to COVID Appropriate Behaviour' along with monitoring infection cases still remains a crucial step in fighting the pandemic. 

Meanwhile, on Friday, scientists from Wuhan also warned about a new covid-19 variant which can be much more lethal than the Delta and Omicron variant. This new variant is named as NeoCov by the scientists.