Union Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan has said that India’s response has been proactive, pre-emptive and graded in handling situation arising out of COVID-19 outbreak.

Union Health Minister stated this on Thursday while participating in a virtual interactive session with Health Ministers of member countries of World Health Organization (WHO) on the measures being taken for containment of COVID-19.

The Minister said, the current situation on COVID-19 in the world is alarming and requires special measures to mitigate the number of casualties. Exhorting the WHO officials, the Health Minister said, we are meeting in troubled times and we have to work together by sharing our best practices to eradicate COVID-19.

Union Health Minister Dr. Harsh Vardhan stated that India was first to respond to COVID-19 and stands on a better footing then the rest of the world because of the valuable and sincere services of its Corona Warriors.

Union Minister also said, during the last three months, the government has scaled up the number of government labs to 230 aided by another 87 private labs with more than 16 thousand collection centres.

The Minister said, so far more than five lakh people have been tested for COVID-19.

Union Minister said, the government is going to increase the numbers of its labs to 300 and ramp up its present daily testing capacity of 55 thousand to one lakh per day by 31st of next month.

The Minister also said, India has in all 2,033 dedicated facilities in the country with more than one lakh 90 thousand isolation beds, more than 24 thousand ICU beds and more than 12,000 ventilators.

Further, while referring to the solutions meant to curiosity of people to know about the risk hovering around, Union Minister Dr. Harsh Vardhan highlighted the effectiveness of‘ Aarogya Setu mobile application, which has been downloaded by more than 7.2 Crore people.