The Union Health Minister of India, Mansukh Mandaviya, advised all states to remain alert and strengthen efforts to monitor and curb rising COVID-19 infections. During a review meeting, he urged the need to identify emerging hotspots by monitoring trends of influenza-like illness and severe acute respiratory infections cases. The minister also called for creating awareness of Covid-appropriate behaviour and urged state and union territory health ministers to conduct mock drills of all hospital infrastructure. He emphasized the need to ramp up genome sequencing of positive samples and significantly increase the rate of testing and vaccination of eligible populations, especially the elderly and vulnerable population group.
