CoWIN in Hindi, vernacular soon; 17 more labs to test genome – The Indian Express

The Union Health Ministry on Monday announced that CoWIN portal, through which slots are to be booked for Covid vaccination, will be made available in Hindi and 14 regional languages by next week. It also said that 17 more laboratories will be added to the INSACOG network to conduct genome surveillance and monitor the variants of Covid-19.

The two key decisions were announced at the 26th meeting of the High-level Group of Ministers (GoM) on COVID-19, chaired by Health Minister Harsh Vardhan.

This came on a day Prime Minister Narendra Modi held an interaction with a group of doctors from across the country, via video conferencing, to discuss the Covid situation. During the meeting, the Prime Minister urged the doctors to include oxygen audits in their daily efforts.

Noting that a large number of patients are undergoing treatment in home isolation, he requested the doctors to ensure that the home-based care of every patient is SOP driven. He said telemedicine has played a big role for patients in home isolation, and this service needs to be expanded in rural areas as well, the PMO said in a statement.

During the meeting, the PMO said, the Prime Minister appealed to doctors across the states to form teams, train final year MBBS students and MBBS interns, and work towards ensuring that all tehsils and districts of the country have telemedicine service.

He further underscored the importance of psychological care, along with the importance of physical care. He said continuously fighting this long battle against the virus must be mentally challenging for the medical fraternity, but the power of faith of citizens stands with them in this fight, the PMO said in a statement.

During the GoM meeting, Vardhan, informed the ministers that 17 new labs are going to be added to the INSACOG (Indian SARS-CoV-2 Consortium on Genomics) network to increase the number of samples screened and allow for more spatial analysis. The network is currently served by 10 laboratories located in different locations of the country.

Indias Covid-19 new cases have dropped to less than 3 lakh for the first time after 26 days. Also, a net decline of 1,01,461 cases have been recorded in the active caseload in the last 24 hours, Vardhan said during the meeting.

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CoWIN in Hindi, vernacular soon; 17 more labs to test genome - The Indian Express