India is on Covid-19 cases decline, WHO praises the government for its efforts

Last updated on February 16th, 2021 at 06:53 am

On Thursday, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government were praised by World Health Organization’s country representative to India, Dr. Roderico Ofrin for India’s performance in tackling the Covid-19 pandemic head-on successfully and for making it a ‘Jan Andolan’. 

Ofrin said, “The access, affordability and the speed which you get the result of the test, communicating and engaging with the community to be able to do COVID-19 appropriate behaviors– it was all on the call of Prime Minister, the Jan Andolan.” 

WHO country representative also said that taking into consideration the massive country size, population size and demographic variations what India has managed to achieve is commendable. “Considering the magnitude of the population, 1.3 billion, 37 states and UTs, 770 districts and multiply the key public health actions into that, for that government of India has to be very proud of,” he added.

India has become the fastest country recently to vaccinate 6 million people against Covid-19. Union Health Ministry said that to reach this milestone India took just 24 days, while the USA took 26 days and the UK took 46 days. 

Talking about the vaccination drive in the country, Ofrin said, “Bringing diligence and disciplined response to vaccination is another area of responsibility. We see that it has been successful as six million have been vaccinated and it is the fastest rate of vaccination happening.” 

Through consistent efforts, India over the past three months there has been a constant decline in the number of Covid-19 cases. Ofrin said, “It’s something the Government of India should be very, very proud of.” 

On Thursday, India reported 12,923 new cases of Covid-19 in the last 24 hours, bringing the total cases in-country to 10,871,294. Currently, there are 142.562 active cases in India and a death toll of 155,360. The past 24 hours have recorded 108 deaths. The recovered count stands at 10,573,372.