Ravish Mishra
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said that the COVID-19 death rate in India is very low in spite of the large population due to the people powered and people driven approach. He added that today, there is a decline in the number of cases per day, decline in the growth rate of cases and India has one of the highest recovery rates of 88 percent. He said this has happened because India: was one of the first countries to adopt a flexible lockdown, was one of the first to encourage the usage of masks, actively began to work on effective contact-tracing and was one of the earliest to deploy the rapid antigen  tests.

Delivering the Keynote Address at the Grand Challenges Annual Meeting 2020, the Prime Minister remarked that India is now at the forefront of vaccine development for COVID. He announced more than 30 indigenous vaccines are being developed in our country and three of them are in an advanced stage. He said India is already working on putting a well-established Vaccine delivery system in place and this digitised network along with digital health ID will be used to ensure immunisation of our citizens. He pointed that India is known for its proven capacity to produce quality medicines and vaccines at low cost. More than 60 percent of the Vaccines for Global Immunisation are being manufactured in India. He said with India’s experience and research talent, India will be at the centre of global healthcare efforts and desires to help other nations enhance their capacities in these sectors.

The Prime Minister listed many interventions made in the last 6 years like better sanitation, improved cleanliness, more toilet coverage which has contributed to a better healthcare system. He said this has helped the women, poor and under-privileged and led to a reduction in diseases. He further listed the efforts of the Government in ensuring disease reduction and bringing better healthcare to the villages like providing piped drinking water to every household, setting up medical colleges in rural areas and running the world’s largest health insurance scheme.