Will India Witness Another Lockdown? PM Modi To Virtually Meet Chief Ministers Of 8 States Today To Discuss Covid Situation

PM may discuss emergency approval, distribution, and advance purchase of vaccines.With Pfizer and Moderna vaccines showing promising results, emergency approval of the vaccine, advance purchase, and price of vaccine have been discussed in a recent meeting of NITI Aayog.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi. (File Photo/ PTI)

Coronavirus in India: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will chair a meeting with Chief Ministers of states and Union Territories virtually through video conferencing on Tuesday, according to independent news agency ANI. It is anticipated that the PM will review the situation of the states worst hit by Covid-19 including Delhi, Rajasthan, Kerala, Maharashtra, and West Bengal, as the states have shown a sudden surge in the coronavirus cases. It is expected that PM can also discuss the emergency approval of the coronavirus vaccine and its distribution in the respective states. As emergency approval of the Covid-19 vaccine, advance purchase and its price were discussed in the recent NITI Aayog meeting. As of now, there are four different vaccine candidates in India, two of which are indigenously developed the ICMR’ “Covaxin” which has shown 60 per cent response against the virus and Zydus Cadila’s “ZyCoVD”, both of them are in the late-stage trials. While Oxford University and Astrazenca’s “CoviShield” which has shown a response of 90 per cent against the virus and the Russian vaccine “Sputnik V” are in the final stage of the clinical human trials. The discussion of vaccine is also a major point as the corona vaccine of Pfizer and Moderna have shown up to 95 per cent resistance against the virus. According to sources, in the meeting with the PM, strategies to handle the ongoing pandemic of Covid-19 and to reduce the burden on the public health infrastructure. As the central government is helping the state to increase medical infrastructure and health care, the challenge against the Covid-19 is the close and effective coordination of the state. According to the health ministry data, 44,059 new cases of Covid-19 511 deaths were recorded across the country on Monday and with the new number, the total cases recorded till now crossed the nine millionth mark. Meanwhile, 41,024 patients recovered from the disease, the very same day. In the current situation, the total coronavirus cases in the country stand at 91 lakh and 40 thousand, out of which 1 lakh 33 thousand and 738 people have lost their lives battling the disease. While the recovery rate stands at 93.65 per cent and the fatality rate stands at 1.46 per cent. With the coronavirus situation seen worsening in a few states, it is being speculated that post reviewing the situation, lockdown may be imposed again. However, there is little chance that the lockdown will occur again.