<p style="font-weight: 400;">In a bid to bolster efforts to tackle the rapid spread of COVID-19 epidemic in the country, Prime Minister Narendra Modi today interacted with Chief Ministers via video conferencing and urged them not to forget the ultimate goal—to ensure minimum loss of life.</p>
<p style="font-weight: 400;">The PM also said that states and the Centre must formulate a common exit strategy to ensure staggered re-emergence of population once lockdown ends.</p>
<p style="font-weight: 400;">Modi thanked states for supporting the decision of lockdown due to which India has achieved some success in limiting the spread of coronavirus.</p>
<p style="font-weight: 400;">He, however, forewarned that the global situation remains far from satisfactory and informed them about speculations of a possible second wave of spread of the virus in some countries.</p>
<p style="font-weight: 400;">The PM said that in the next few weeks, testing, tracing, isolation and quarantine should remain the areas of focus. He highlighted the necessity of maintaining supply of essential medical products, availability of raw material for manufacture of medicines and medical equipment. He said it is necessary to ensure availability of separate, dedicated hospital facilities for Covid-19 patients.</p>
<p style="font-weight: 400;">To increase the availability of doctors, Modi asked the states to tap into the resource pool of AYUSH doctors, organize online training, and utilize paramedical staff, NCC, and NSS volunteers.</p>
<p style="font-weight: 400;">Underscoring the importance of coordinated action and the need to avoid overlaps in efforts of stakeholders, the Prime Minister talked about the need of setting up crisis management groups at district levels and appointment of district surveillance officers. He said that data must be taken from the accredited labs for testing; this will ensure congruence in data of district, state, and the Centre.</p>
<p style="font-weight: 400;">He said it is necessary to ensure staggered release of funds to the beneficiaries under the PM Garib Kalyan Yojana to avoid crowding at banks.</p>
<p style="font-weight: 400;">The Prime Minister said that considering that this is the time to harvest crops, the government has given some relaxation from lockdown but it is necessary to continuously monitor and maintain social distancing as much as possible. He asked the states to think of other platforms for procuring grains apart from APMC, and explore the possibility of creating pooling platforms for rural areas, like that in ride sharing apps, which can be used for this purpose.</p>
<p style="font-weight: 400;">CMs mentioned their efforts of maintaining social distancing, tracking suspect cases, identifying, and quarantining suspect cases arising from Nizamuddin Markaz, containing community transmission, boosting up of medical infrastructure, strengthening medical workforce, provision of tele-medicine, provision of mental health counseling, distribution of food and other essentials to those in need and taking care of migrant workers.</p>
<p style="font-weight: 400;">Home Minister Amit Shah talked about the need to implement lockdown more strictly in some states and the importance of effective district level implementation of the guidelines issued by the Centre.</p>.