Meghalaya Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma on Wednesday said the government is adopting a three-pronged strategy to combat the second wave of COVID-19 pandemic.
“We are following a three-pronged strategy – first is containment, second is vaccination and third is health care,” Sangma told reporters.
He said the challenge is to ensure that livelihood is not affected in an adverse manner and yet the health concerns are balanced.
“That is the reason why we have gone for a containment strategy to ensure things do not get out of control. But seeing the numbers that are rising, that is why the containment is going to be converted into a lockdown for the next five days in East Khasi Hills,” he said.
Stating that the vaccination drive is going on well, the chief minister however said still there are a large number of citizens who are 45 years and above who have not got vaccinated yet because of that the overall numbers have not reached to a satisfactory level.
“Therefore, I would urge everybody who is above the age of 45 years to immediately go and get their vaccination in the closest centre to your place,” he said while informing that the state is having enough vaccines for the population of this age group.
Regarding the vaccination for the 18 to 44 years category, the chief minister said the state will be receiving 42,000 doses from the Serum Institute.
“As and when we receive these 42,000 doses for the month of May, we will schedule the appointments and ensure that the vaccines are distributed to areas which needed the most at this point in time,” he said.
“So it will not be enough for everyone but we hope that the process will start and we expect that in the coming weeks and coming months that we will get sufficient supply as you are aware there is a shortage of vaccination throughout the country and globally but we expect the situation will improve,” he added.
As far as the health care service is concerned, the chief minister said the government has taken a large number of steps to overall increase the oxygen supply in the state.
“We have taken steps to increase the numbers of beds through which we can provide health care services to our citizens especially to the people who would need it but we have to remember no matter how many beds we expand, if the numbers goes out of control and if we are not able to contain the situation, no matter how many beds we get it will not be enough,” he said.
“Therefore, the strategy has to be three pronged where we contain, we increase the healthcare facilities and we go for large scale vaccination. It is only by doing all the three that we will be able to keep things under control,” Sangma added.
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