Covid-19 crisis: Uday Kotak calls for strongest national steps, curbs on economic activity

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New Delhi: Industry body CII has urged the government to take “strongest” national steps including curtailing economic activity to contain the spike in Covid-19 cases in the country.

CII President Uday Kotak has asked for highest-level response measures to address the rising wave of Covid-19 cases, as currently safeguarding lives is key to cut the transmission links.

“The healthcare infrastructure and supply build-up are being undertaken on an emergency basis by the governments at the centre and states, but will take time.

“At this critical juncture when the toll of lives is rising, CII urges the strongest national steps including curtailing economic activity to reduce suffering,” the President has said in a statement.

The chamber said that the current pace of daily caseloads, the requirement for hospital beds and ICU beds, oxygen, and medicines will continue to escalate.

“Healthcare and frontline workers are giving their best efforts to tackle the influx of patients, but it may not be possible to manage escalating caseloads with the present medical talent availability. We must heed expert advice on this subject – from India and abroad. Highest response measures are needed to break the chain of contagion and also use the time to rapidly build up capacity,” Kotak added.

CII also suggested certain measures such as deployment of armed forces and central security forces for logistics, infrastructure and personnel; security at hospitals for medical personnel; tapping manpower sources such as retired medical personnel, doctors and nurses; and distribution of vaccination supplies to states according to well-defined criteria.

“Nursing and medical students who have finished GNM/BSC training and who are awaiting exams can be roped in and this can be counted for future requirements/credits after one year of COVID ICU work,” CII suggested.

Further, it asked for scaling up RT-PCR testing to double the current daily numbers both in urban and rural India.

The daily Covid-19 cases in India showed a slight dip with 3,68,147 new coronavirus infections being reported in a day, taking the total tally of cases to 1,99,25,604, according to the Union Health Ministry data updated on Monday.