India pursued scientific evidence-based to tackle Covid-19: Harsh Vardhan

India recognised the COVID-19 threat early and pursued a scientific evidence-based approach to combat the situation, said Harsh Vardhan, Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare, while addressing a virtual event by the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI) and the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR).

Speaking on "Build Back Better: building resilient health infrastructure and supply chains", Vardhan said on Thursday, "It has been almost one year since the outbreak of COVID-19. While the caseload infection in many parts of the world is decreasing, many others are experiencing a second or even a third peak. Fortunately, in India, the cases are steadily coming down. We recognized the threat early and pursued a scientific evidence based approach."

Highlighting the steps taken by India to handle the unprecedented humanitarian crisis, he stated, "Our first step was to expand our present capacities swiftly, whether it was for testing, PPE production, or hospital beds. We looked at the problem in greater granularity and scaled up at an incredible pace."

He asserted that from being an importer of PPEs before the pandemic, India is now a net exporter of PPEs., adding that some of the good practices that have been developed in many countries of the world during the pandemic need to be "institutionalised".

Stressing that disaster resilience as an essential area of common interest globally, he stated, "Over the past decades, India and nations of the world have seen unprecedented progress in economic and human development. However, as COVID-19 has shown, all of this notable progress is at risk if we do not make our systems resilient. The key lesson from the pandemic is that the principles of resilience must be integral to our quest for economic growth as individual nations and the international community.