IT Correspondent
Mumbai, April 12:
The Union Government banned the export of “Remdesivir” injection and “Remdesivir” Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients even as the load of active cases surged up to 11.08 lakh on Sunday.
Seven Indian companies are producing “Remdesivir” injection under voluntary licensing agreement with M/s. Gilead Sciences, USA. These companies have an installed capacity of about 38.80 lakh units per month.
In light of the surging COVID-19 cases the Government prohibited the exports of Injection Remdesivir and Remdesivir Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (API) till the situation improves. In addition, the government has taken the following steps to ensure easy access of hospital and patients to Remdesivir: All domestic manufactures of Remdesivir have been advised to display on their website, details of their stockists/distributors to facilitate access to the drug. Drugs inspectors and other officers have been directed to verify stocks and check their malpractices and also take other effective actions to curb hoarding and black marketing. The State Health Secretaries will review this with the Drug Inspectors of the respective States/UTs. The Department of Pharmaceuticals has been in contact with the domestic manufacturers to ramp up the production of “Remdesivir”.
The government has also advised the states that the extant “National Clinical Management Protocol for COVID-19”, which is based on evidence, has been developed after many interactions by Committee of Experts, and is the guiding document for treatment of COVIDd-19 patients. In the Protocol, “Remdesivir” is listed as an investigational therapy, i.e. where informed and shared decision making is essential, besides taking note of contra indications mentioned in the detailed guidelines. The government also advised the states and union territories to communicate these steps to all hospitals, both in public and private sector, and monitor the compliance.
Gaps in containment strategy alleged
On Sunday, the Union Government also pointed out gaps in containment strategy adopted by Maharashtra, Punjab and Chhatisgarh. The reluctance towards following COVID-19 preventative behaviour, overburdened test centres along with lack of containment strategy is leading to rise in cases and deaths in Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh and Punjab, the government pointed out.
The Centre on Sunday wrote to Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh and Punjab outlining feedback shared by the 50 high level public health teams, deployed in these states witnessing a spike in coronavirus disease (Covid-19) cases, claiming that they need to ramp up measures to tackle the pandemic.
Union health secretary Rajesh Bhushan requested the health secretaries of the three states to implement the suggestions shared by the teams in order to check the sudden surge of COVID-19 cases. The public health teams, which visited different health institutes dealing with coronavirus have highlighted issues related to testing, hospital infrastructure, containment operations and vaccination progress, Bhushan stated in his letter.
Maharashtra
The 30 teams deployed in Maharashtra reported that there was reluctance towards following COVID-19 appropriate behaviour. They suggested the government increase efforts to strictly enforce adherence to COVID-19 preventive measures. One of the Central team visited the vaccination centre at Bandra Kurla Complex to assess the current situation in Mumbai on Sunday.
The teams reported that testing capacities in at least eight districts were overwhelmed. Palghar, Satara, Amrawati, Bhandara, Jalna, Nanded, Buldhana and Latur were delaying reporting of test results due to this. The teams also pointed out that resistance to testing in Bhandara. The district is also reporting a large number of cases from outside containment zones.
Containment operations in Satara, Sangli and Aurangabad districts were not up to the standard while contact tracing operations in Buldhana, Satara, Aurangabad and Nanded were ‘suboptimal.’ While Ahmednagar, Aurangabad, Nagpur and Nandurbar districts reported a high occupancy of hospital beds, Aurangabad is depending on neighbouring districts for treatment of its critical patients. The teams urged the district administration to address hospitalization related issues on a priority basis.
Pune, Palghar, Osmanabad and Bhandara were facing medical oxygen supply issues, while Satara and Latur had malfunctioning ventilators affecting patients. Similarly there was acute shortage of health workers in Palghar,Aurangabad, Jalna, Nandurabar, Jalgaon Yawatmal, Satara, and Jalna districts have reported an acute shortage of healthcare workers. The Centre’s teams advised the authorities to hire contractual workers to address these issues.
Punjab
The teams deployed in Punjab stated that Patiala and Ludhiana were vaccinating people at a slower pace. Both districts were also lagging behind in terms of contact tracing. Besides the rate of testing in Patiala was also dropped. The teams also pointed out that Rupnagar district has no dedicated COVID-19 hospital and a dedicated RT-PCR testing laboratory. The teams also asked the district administration to prioritise addressing hospital infrastructure in SAS Nagar, Jalandhar and Ludhiana as hospital bed occupancy rates continued to rise due to the rise in the number of coronavirus disease cases.
Chhattisgarh
In Chhattisgarh, Korba, Durg and Balod districts were facing a shortage of RT-PCR testing facilities. These three districts were having high hospital bed occupancy rates and all ICU beds were occupied. Besides the Korba was facing a shortage of Remdesivir. Besides Durg, Jashpur and Rajnandangaon districts were facing a shortage of healthcare workers.
Tika Utsav
In the meanwhile on the first day of four day long “Tika Utsav”, nearly 27.69 lakh vaccine doses were given on 63,800 centres across the country, thus taking the cumulative coverage of COVID-19 vaccination coverage up to 10.43 crore. In all 27.69 lakh doses were given on Sunday under the drive which will be operational till April 14.
