Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday, April 3, held a video conference with Chief Ministers of all the states and discussed measures to combat COVID-19 pandemic, where he stressed on the need of a common but staggered exit strategy to lift the lockdown across the country.
“The states and centre must formulate a common exit strategy to ensure staggered re-emergence of the population once lockdown ends,” a governmentstatementquoted Modi as saying. He further asked the states to “brainstorm and send suggestions for the exit strategy.”
The PM emphasised that “the common goal for the country is to ensure minimum loss of life. In the next few weeks, testing, tracing, isolation and quarantine should remain the areas of focus.”
Modi thanked the states for supporting the lockdown and appreciated the steps taken by them to check the spread of the novel coronavirus. He “forewarned that the global situation remains far from satisfactory and informed about speculations of a possible second wave of the spread of the virus in some countries.”
He said that it was necessary to maintain a “supply of essential medical products, availability of raw material for the manufacture of medicines and medical equipment.”
He asked the states to make available dedicated hospital facilities for COVID-19 patients, tap into the resource pool of AYUSH doctors, organise online training and utilise paramedical staff, NCC, and NSS volunteers.
“It is imperative to work on a war footing, identify hotspots of the virus, encircle them and ensure that the virus does not spread out,” the PM said. He stressed on the need to maintain law and order and said, “COVID-19 has attacked our faith and belief and is threatening our way of life.”
He further appealed the states to “reach out to community leaders and social welfare organisations at the state, district, town and block levels to build up a united front based on community-approach in the battle against the pandemic.”
As this is the time to harvest crops, PM said “the government has given some relaxation from lockdown but it is necessary to continuously monitor and maintain social distancing as much as possible” and 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.”