Final year MBBS students likely to join Covid duty, amid rising cases in India

Due to shortage of healthcare personnel amid the latest surge in coronavirus cases across India, the government could ask final-year students of medical and nursing courses to to join the Covid force and incentivise those joining in future recruitments, sources said on Monday. The decision is said to have been taken at a virtual meeting of Prime Minister Narendra Modi with experts to review oxygen and medicine availability. The human resource situation in relation to the Covid-19 pandemic, and ways to augment it, were discussed during the meeting.

The decisions taken at the meeting might also include delaying the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) examination and incentivising MBBS pass-outs studying for it to join Covid duty. It might also include utilising services of final year MBBS and nursing students in Covid Duty. India on Sunday reported its highest single-day toll of 3,689 Covid deaths. The country also saw a slight dip in the daily numbers with 3,92,488 new cases. The new cases take India Covid tally to 1,95,57,457. The country currently has 33,49,644 active cases and the total death toll stands at 2,15,542. As many as 3,07,865 discharges have been made in the last 25 hours, which takes the total number of recovered cases to 1,59,92,271. A total of 15,68,16,031 people have been so far vaccinated in the country.