Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to chair an all-party meeting on December 4 to discuss the Covid-19 situation in the country said a person aware of the details.
The Prime Minister will meet the floor leaders of all parties that have more than five MPs in Parliament to assess the situation on the ground. At the meeting, which will be held through video-conferencing, the PM is likely to take up the issue of the government’s preparation for the Covid-19 vaccine rollout.
The PM has so-far interacted with six companies involved in the producing the vaccine. On Monday, over video conferencing he interacted with teams from Gennova Biopharma, Biological E and Dr. Reddy’s.
A statement issued by the PM’s office said, “The PM appreciated the efforts being taken by the scientists in these companies to come out with a vaccine solution to tackle Covid-19. The potential of various platforms for vaccine development was also discussed.”
Modi also asked the companies to come out with their suggestions and ideas regarding the regulatory processes and related matters and suggested they take extra efforts to inform the general public in simple language about the vaccine and related matters such as its efficacy etc., the PMO said.
“Matters relating to logistics, transport, cold chain etc in respect of delivering the vaccines were also discussed…The PM advised all the departments concerned to engage with the manufacturers and seek to resolve matters so that the efforts by these companies bear fruit in order to serve the needs of the country and the entire world,” the statement said.
The all-party meeting comes close on the heels of the Prime Minister’s meeting with a group of chief ministers on November 24. In that meeting the Prime Minister had underlined the need to collectively curb the transmission of Covid-19 and bring the positivity rate under 5%.
The Prime Minister had reiterated the need to guard against the spread of the virus and had asked the states to set up task forces or steering committees at district and block levels to prepare for the Covid vaccine programme.
Last week, the Union home ministry also released guidelines for surveillance and containment to consolidate the gains that have been achieved against the spread of the virus. The new guidelines which will come into force from December 1, empower the states to impose local restrictions including night curfew to check the spread of the virus.
In April the Prime Minister had interacted with the floor leaders of all the parties through video conference. At that meeting he had suggested that it may be necessary to extend the 21 day lockdown that was imposed in March and spoken about the government’s priority to save lives.
