India has managed to smoothen the Covid -19 curve and keep fatality rate low. While increasing positivity rate is a concern, India is better placed than many other nations, ICMR DG Dr Balram Bhargava told Sushmi Dey.
ICMR has been on the forefront in the Covid-19 battle. How is the battle progressing?
A: We have spent about three months now working 24 x7 to provide facilities for testing and also have a calibrated testing strategy which can respond to the need of the hour. We have been able to take care of mortality. It is obviously open to question as to why mortality is low in our country but early diagnosis is one aspect and also because we probably have higher immunity. Deaths were our only concern from day one. Though (our infrastructure) may not be A+ uniformly but we have to remember that our healthcare spending is 0.9 percent of GDP as compared to 19 percent in US, which is a 19 trillion dollar economy, so their health budget is more than the budget of this country as a whole.
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How do you plan to ramp up health infrastructure in order to deal with the growing number of cases?
A: We have now got 642 labs in the country with a vision that every state should be self-sufficient and ultimately states decide how much testing they can do. We ha
