New Delhi, Jun 4: The first session of the newly-elected 16th Lok Sabha commenced here Wednesday. Ahead of the first session, senior Congress leader Kamal Nath was sworn-in as the pro tem speaker by President Pranab Mukherjee.
The house observed a two-minute silence in the memory of union minister Gopinath Munde, who died Tuesday following a car accident in the capital.
New Delhi, Mar 26: Ujjwala beneficiaries will get free gas cylinders (LPG cylinders) in the next three months, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced on Thursday. Addressing a press briefing amid coronavirus pandemic, the finance minister said the announcement is set to benefit 8.3 crore BPL families.
New Delhi, Mar 9: The Centre and the Delhi government are working in close coordination to deal with coronavirus, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said here on Monday.
Talking to reporters after a review meeting with Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan on the preparedness for COVID-19, the chief minister said people arriving from foreign countries are being screened at airports.
A campaign will be run to make people aware of the preventive measures to contain the spread of the disease, Kejriwal said.
Health Ministry sending directives to states: Vardhan
Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said the government is prepared to deal with novel coronavirus and his ministry is sending directives, including guidelines, to states in all the languages on ways to contain it.
"We are sending detailed guidelines to all states on ways to contain coronavirus. Have asked states to strengthen laboratories and manpower to effectively deal with coronavirus and form early rapid action teams," Vardhan told reporters adding, that the government is prepared to deal with the infection.
Vardhan stressed on a coordinated action between all concerned departments and agencies for activities such as contact tracing, community surveillance, hospital management, identification of isolation wards, ensuring adequate personal protection equipment and masks and risk communication for mass awareness.
New Delhi, Apr 24: The Central government said on Wednesday that the number of COVID-19 cases in the country is now doubling in every 10 days, adding that had the lockdown not been imposed on time, the number of cases would have sky-rocketed to over one lakh by now.
"Had we not taken the decision to impose nationwide lockdown, we would have had around one lakh COVID-19 cases by now. This is a reasonable estimate," said Niti Aayog member V.K. Paul.
Paul, who is also the Chairman of the government's Empowered Committee- 1, said the "cases are now doubling in every 10 days."
"As on March 21, our doubling time of cases was three days. Results started showing on March 23, due to travel restrictions imposed earlier. On April 6, further slowing of doubling rate became visible, thanks to the nationwide lockdown," he added.
He further added that the decision to impose the lockdown was timely and asserted that the curve has begun to flatten.
"Nationwide lockdown helped take us away from the exponential growth curve and thereby contain the growth of COVID-19 cases," he said.
Paul further added that surveillance has been a great strength in containing the spread of the virus.
"Besides containing the spread, augmenting testing and improving preparedness, the nation has brought about a massive behavioural change through a ‘Jan Andolan' (mass movement)," he said.
Meanwhile, the number of confirmed cases in the country has crossed the 23,000-mark, with 718 deaths. Globally, the number of cases has crossed 2.7 million while the death toll has mounted to 1.9 lakh.
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