Health Minister Directs High Alertness, Aggressive Genome Sequencing as Covid Cases Spike in Asia, Europe

Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya on Wednesday chaired a high-Level meeting on the rising number of Covid cases in China and other countries. The Minister directed officials to maintain a high level of alertness and surveillance, and carry out genomic sequencing aggressively. At a high-level meeting, chaired by the minister, the government’s decision of resuming scheduled international flights from March 27, the vaccination situation and the level of genomic surveillance were reviewed.Also Read - Israel Reports New COVID Variant Cases, Strain Still 'Unknown' Around World

Senior government officials including Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan, Department of Biotechnology secretary Dr Rajesh Gokhale, Secretary in the Department of Pharmaceuticals S Aparna, NITI Aayog member (Health) V K Paul, ICMR Director-General Dr Balram Bhargava and AIIMS Director Dr Randeep Guleria and Dr N K Arora, the chairman of the COVID-19 working group of NTAGI, attended the meeting.