PM: Concerned about crowds at hill stations
NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday said it is a matter of concern that big crowds are thronging hill stations and market areas without masks and social distancing.
During an interaction with chief ministers of eight northeastern states through video conferencing, the Prime Minister also said the vaccination drive needs to be continuously ramped up to combat the third wave of the pandemic.
To deal with the myths pertaining to vaccination, PM Modi asked the states to enlist the help of social, educational institutes, and also organisations of religious faith. Keeping in mind the difficult northeastern terrain, he also underlined the need to establish temporary hospitals.
“We need to continue accelerating our vaccination drive,” he said.
The virtual meeting was attended by chief ministers of Assam, Nagaland, Tripura, Sikkim, Manipur, Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh and Mizoram, along with Union home minister Amit Shah and Union health minister Mansukh Mandaviya.
Modi urged people not to compromise on Covid protocols to prevent a third wave of coronavirus. “It is true that tourism and business have been greatly affected due to Corona. But today I will say with great emphasis that it is not right to
have huge crowds in hill stations, markets without masks,” Modi said, adding, “We all need to work together to stop the third wave of COVID-19 pandemic.” The Prime Minister said the Covid-19 situation was worrisome in some districts of North-East and urged the chief ministers to stay alert and act fast to check the further spread of the virus.
Emphasizing the need to keep an eye on every variant of the coronavirus, he said experts are constantly studying how troubling the virus could be after mutations, but in such a dynamic situation, prevention and treatment are very important. Stricter steps were needed at the micro-level to check the virus spread and called for greater emphasis on micro-containment zones, he said.
“We have to move forward by improving the infrastructure related to testing and treatment. For this, recently the cabinet has also approved a new package of Rs 23,000 crore. Every state in the North East can take help from this package to strengthen its health infrastructure,” Modi said.
The PM spoke about the need to scale up Covid-19 testing in the affected districts. He also stressed on random testing to track, isolate and treat the infected as fast as possible to stop the spread of infection. “There are some districts in the region that have shown a high positivity rate, and the chief ministers of states were asked to pay special attention to those,” said a person who attended the meeting, on condition of anonymity. Positivity rate is the percentage of those who test positive for the virus out of the total number of people tested for it.