Lockdown period used to augment healthcare infrastructure in country: Dr Harsh Vardhan

The coronavirus-induced lockdown was utilised to quickly augment healthcare infrastructure in the country to fight rising COVID-19 cases, said Union Health and Family Welfare Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan on Thursday.

Addressing the virtual meeting of regional directors of WHO South-East Asia the Union Minister said, "The lockdown period was utilised to quickly augment our healthcare infrastructure to support the growing number of COVID-19 cases. We were able to increase our isolation beds more than 34 times and ICU beds over 20 times."

"Within 10 to 20 days, with the help of DRDO, we were able to create 1,000 to 10,000 beds for COVID-19 patients. Right now, on evaluation, we find that the daily handling capacity of COVID-19 cases in our hospitals has increased to almost 35 times," the Minister added.

While talking about COVID-19 testing in the country, the Health Minister said that there is focus on COVID-19 testing in order to detect cases as earliest as possible, and more than 20 million tests have been conducted so far.

He added that the testing capacity has been augmented to a total of 1,366 laboratories which are conducting over 6,00,000 tests daily in the country.

He said 33 States and Union Territories in the country have exceeded the WHO norm of 140 tests per million per day and have been continuously increasing their capacity.

The Minister said that the recovery rates are improving on a daily basis, and the fatality rates are dropping.

( With inputs from ANI )