ENSURING WELLNESS

Post-Covid, the health ministry has not rested on its laurels but has actively pursued the priorities that were derailed by the pandemic

- Sonali Acharjee

Mansukh L. Mandaviya, Minister of Health & Family Welfare, Chemicals & Fertilisers

IT'S BY THE WAY A BODY COPES under strain that you judge its robustness. India traced the full Covid journey almost like a patient-sudden capture by a virus, moments of hypoxia and panic, despair and debility, pain, convalescence and then recovery. Judge by the fact that, in the end, it had rolled out the most extensive vaccination programme in the world. All of 2.2 billion vaccine doses till now. But it isn't just vaccines that the ministry of health and family welfare (MoHFW) excelled in during the pandemic. Many forget that when Covid struck, we had only 14 labs to test samples. By the end of 2022, this figure stood at 1,453 government labs and 1,935 private ones, which together have a capacity to test 250,000 samples a day. The ministry also set up INSACOG, a national-level disease surveillance network of 10 genomic sampling labs. These two improvements should help significantly in the handling of any future pandemics.