Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday said that India has one of the highest recovery rates—88 per cent— because it was one of the first countries to adopt a flexible lockdown. “India’s size, scale and diversity have always made the global community curious. Our population is almost four times that of theUS. Many of our states are as populated as other nations in Europe and Asia. Thanks to people power and peopledriven approach, India kept its Covid-19 death rate very low,” he said.
While addressing the inaugural function of the 16th Grand Challenges Annual Meeting 2020 via video conferencing, PM Modi said, “Today we are seeing a decline in the number of cases per day and in the growth rate of cases. India has one of the highest recovery rates—88 per cent. This happened because India was one of the first countries to adopt a flexible lockdown when the total cases were just a few hundred,” the PM said.
PM Modi said India was one of the first to encourage the use of masks. India actively began to work on effective contact tracing. India was one of the earliest to deploy the Rapid Antigen test. India is now at the forefront of vaccine development for Covid. Some of them are in advanced stages. “We are not stopping here. India is already working on putting a well-established vaccine delivery mechanism in place. This digitised network along with digital health ID will be used to ensure immunisation of our citizens,” he said.
Speaking about the meeting, he said, this meeting was to be held physically in India, but in changed circumstances, it is being held virtually. “Such is the power of technology that the global pandemic did not keep us apart. This programme has continued as per schedule. This shows the commitment of the grand challenges community. This shows our commitment to adapt and innovate,” the PM said.
“The future will be shaped by a society that invests in science and innovation. But this cannot be done in a short-sighted manner. One has to invest in science and innovation well in advance. That is when we can reap benefits at the right time. Similarly, the journey to these innovations must be shaped by collaboration and public participation,” he said.
With agency inputs