The Centre will disburse Rs 890 crore to 22 states in the second instalment of the Rs 15,000 crore COVID-19 Emergency Response and Health System Preparedness package announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on March 24 for ramping up India’s health infrastructure.
The states that will get the package include Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Rajasthan, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Goa, Gujarat, Karnataka, Kerala, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Dadra & Nagar Haveli and Daman & Diu, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Meghalaya, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland and Sikkim.
The amount of financial assistance to be received is based on the COVID-19 caseload in these states and union territories, the health ministry said in a statement.
The money will be used for strengthening of public health facilities infrastructure for testing including procurement and installation of RT-PCR machines, RNA extraction kits, TruNat & CBNAAT machines, strengthening of public health facility infrastructure for treatment such as the development of ICU beds, installation of oxygen generators, cryogenic oxygen tanks and medical gas pipelines in public health facilities and procurement of bed-side oxygen concentrators, among other issues.
The money will also be used to augment the numbers of trained healthcare workers, including ASHAs. “Wherever necessary, volunteers registered on the COVID Warriors portal may also be engaged for COVID duties,” the health ministry has said.
With the first instalment, the states were able to arrange for 5,80,342 isolation beds, 1,36,068 oxygen supported beds and 31,255 ICU beds. Also, they were able to procure over 86 lakh testing kits and 96,557 personnel as well as to provide incentives to over 6 lakh workers involved in COVID management.
The Centre had also set aside Rs 2,000 crore from the PM-CARES fund for procuring 50,000 ventilators. The health ministry’s own budgetary allocation would be used to procure another 10,000 ventilators, and of the total 60,000 ventilators, a total of 18,000 had been procured until now, health secretary Rajesh Bhushan said.
