Covid-19: Social distancing, lockdown most potent vaccine, says Health Minister at Bennett University online conference

NEW DELHI: Social distancing and lockdown at present are potent social vaccines against Covid-19 - for which there is no other vaccine, medicine or therapy at present, health minister Harsh Vardhan said stressing on the need for people to follow stringent isolation measures and comply with government guidelines."I can state with utmost confidence that in terms of data or statistics on Covid-19, India is placed much better than any other country," Vardhan said while addressing global online conference on Covid-19 organised by Bennett University At present, cases are doubling every 4.5 days in India, whereas majority of the districts are unaffected, Vardhan said. He added, government has identified 133 districts with hotspots.Vardhan said the Centre along with states are working with an aggressive containment strategy which is divided into large outbreaks containment strategy and cluster containment strategy.Vardhan also urged the country to stand united by frontline health workers who are working in spite the risk of getting infected themselves and name and shame those who are misbehaving or attacking healthcare workers, doctors or nurses.The minister also assured that government has made adequate arrangements for oxygen support, ventilators, isolation beds and ICU facilities even though 85% of the cases are very mild or mild and would not require such facilities.