Funds will be divided among all States, UTs to ramp up infra
The Government on Thursday geared up for a long battle against coronavirus and put in place a five-year Rs 15,000-crore plan to ramp up its health infrastructure to deal with the crisis.
This will be 100 per cent Centrally-funded scheme to strengthen national and State-level health systems. The COVID-19 Emergency Response and Health System Preparedness Package will be implemented in three phases from January 2020 to June 2020, from July 2020 to March 2021 and from April 2021 to March 2024. This fund will be divided among all States and Union Territories.
The Central Government aims to arm States with adequate Covid-19 dedicated hospitals, isolation wards, personal protection equipment (PPE) in the first phase of the three-phase funding project from January 2020 to March 2024. The fund will be utilised for immediate COVID-19 Emergency Response (amount of Rs 7,774 crores) and rest for medium-term support (1-4 years) to be provided under mission mode approach.
“The project will be implemented with the objectives of emergency COVID-19 response, strengthening national and State systems, procurement of essential medical equipment and drugs, strengthening of surveillance including setting up of laboratories and bio-security preparedness,” the Health Ministry said in a letter to the States and UTs.
The letter stated that the Union Ministry will release the funds immediately for the implementation of the plan.
The Union Health Ministry has already disbursed Rs 4,113 crore to all the States and UTs for dealing with the emergency COVID response. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had late last month said that it will be used for treating coronavirus patients and strengthening the medical infrastructure such as rapidly ramping up the number of corona testing facilities, PPE, isolation beds, ICU beds, ventilators and other essential equipment.
On its part, the Centre on Thursday said that there were enough PPEs and Hydroxychloroquine tablets in India. Addressing the daily presser, Health Ministry’s Joint Secretary Lav Aggarwal said the fear around the dearth of PPEs was unfounded and misguided.
He said contrary to popular belief, PPE does not only mean overall covers, “It’s a mix of components. Only in high-risk areas, the whole component is used while in other places, N95 masks and gloves were sufficient.”