Prime Minister Narendra Modi will chair three high-level meetings in Delhi on Friday to review the prevailing COVID-19 situation in the country. Modi has also cancelled all his election rallies scheduled for tomorrow in West Bengal.
Tomorrow, will be chairing high-level meetings to review the prevailing COVID-19 situation. Due to that, I would not be going to West Bengal.
— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) April 22, 2021
Official sources said he will review the COVID-19-related situation in an internal meeting at 9 am followed by the meeting with chief ministers an hour later via videoconference. At 12:30 pm, he will hold a meeting with leading oxygen manufacturers in the country.
The prime minister was scheduled to address four rallies in Murshidabad, Malda, Birbhum and Kolkata South on Friday. After this, no further political meetings of Modi are scheduled in West Bengal, thus effectively ending his campaign in the state as of now.
After the BJP decided to call off all big political meetings and rallies in view of rising COVID-19 cases and restrict its campaign to a maximum of 500 people in the state, Modi's proposed meetings for Saturday were clubbed with his Friday campaign.
Opposition leaders have been critical of the BJP for the big rallies of its leaders at the time of surging COVID-19 cases.
On Thursday, the prime minister chaired a high-level meeting to review the oxygen supply across the country and discuss ways and means to boost its availability. During the meeting, he spoke about the need to work rapidly on multiple aspects: increasing production of oxygen, increasing the speed of distribution and using innovative ways to provide oxygen support to health facilities.
Modi directed the officials to ensure that oxygen supply to various states happen in a smooth, unhindered manner. While speaking about the need to fix responsibility with the local administration in cases of obstruction, he also asked ministries to explore various innovative ways to increase production and supply of oxygen.
According to a PMO release, it was also discussed at the meeting that the Railways is being used for rapid and non-stop long distance transport of tankers. First rake has reached from Mumbai to Vizag to transport 105 MT of LMO. Similarly, empty oxygen tankers are also being air-lifted to Oxygen suppliers to reduce one way journey time in oxygen supply.
Several hospitals in Delhi have reported shortage of medical oxygen with the AAP government accusing neighbouring Uttar Pradesh and Haryana of blocking supply of oxygen to the city.
Meanwhile, the Centre on Thursday evoked the Disaster Management Act to ensure that the supply of medical oxygen doesn’t get hindered by regional lockdowns and inter-state issues.
The number of daily coronavirus cases in India hit a record high with over 3.14 lakh new infections being reported on Wednesday, pushing the total tally of COVID-19 cases to 1,59,30,965. A total of 3,14,835 fresh infections were registered in a span of 24 hours, while the death toll increased to 1,84,657 with a record 2,104 new fatalities, the health ministry data updated at 8 am on Thursday showed.
Registering a steady increase for the 43rd in a row, the active cases have increased to 22,91,428 comprising 14.38 per cent of the total infections, while the national COVID-19 recovery rate has dropped to 84.46 per cent.
