<span style="color: #222222;">Union Home Secretary Ajay Kumar Bhalla has assured continued and full support of Government of India for all efforts of Union Territories in containment and management of COVID-19. Mr Bhalla along with Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan today chaired a high-level meeting to review and discuss the COVID status and the management and response strategy with Chief Secretaries of all the Union Territories of the country. </span><br />'' <br />'' <span style="color: #222222;">The meeting held through video conference, was also attended by Member Health in NITI Aayog Dr V K Paul, Director General of Indian Council of Medical Research Dr Balram Bhargava. The DGs of Police of all UTs were also present at the video conference.</span><br />'' <span style="color: #222222;"> </span><br />'' <span style="color: #222222;">The Home Secretary pointed out the steep growth in the number of cases all across the country. From 20 thousand cases reported on 1st January this year, India has almost 10 times more cases being reported daily since 15th of this month. In the last 11 days, new cases have almost doubled from 1.31 lakh reported on 9th April to 2.73 lakh reported today.</span><br />'' <span style="color: #222222;"> </span><br />'' <span style="color: #222222;">After a detailed discussion of various issues of COVID management, Home Secretary Ajay Kumar Bhalla urged constant vigilance regarding the evolving situation of COVID in the UTs. Strict enforcement of COVID appropriate behavior was stressed along with stricter enforcement of movement restrictions and prohibition of large gatherings and regulated timings for markets. He advised the UTs to increase RT-PCR testing along with use of RAT for screening in clusters. Urgent review of clinical management was strongly recommended along with ramping up testing and hospital infrastructure.</span><br />'' <span style="color: #222222;"> </span><br />'' <span style="color: #222222;">Expressing concern over the worrying scenario, Dr V K Paul pointed out the criticality of next three weeks for COVID response measures. The UT administrators were advised to plan in advance for three weeks. He said, a survey to promptly identify the COVID positive people should be taken up. He also stressed on planning the minutest details of COVID management. For UT of Ladakh, he recommended regulation of the incoming labourers and supervised containment. He suggested that islands can be made large containment zones.</span><br />'' <span style="color: #222222;"> </span><br />'' <span style="color: #222222;">Through a detailed and comprehensive presentation, the current trajectory of total new COVID cases, weekly tests, weekly Positivity Rate, weekly new COVID cases, weekly number of deaths and status/proportion of RT-PCR tests and Rapid Antigen Test in all Union Territories were presented. The UTs shared their present efforts for containment and management of the positive cases. Ladakh, Jammu and Kashmir and Lakshadweep pointed to the rise in cases due to large numbers of inbound travelers.</span><br />'' <br />'' <span style="color: #222222;">Lakshadweep has seen a sudden spike after the 14th of this month primarily due to the travel of a large number of people to mainland to shop for the recent festive occasions. Most UTs have imposed movement restrictions, including night curfew, restriction of intra-island movement in the island UTs. Chandigarh informed that they are conducting door to door counselling for increasing vaccination. 90 per cent of the patients are in home isolation who are being monitored by mobile teams.</span><br />'' <span style="color: #222222;"> </span><br />'' <span style="color: #222222;">Union Territory of Delhi discussed shortage of beds and the present efforts to augment this through Central Government infrastructure and support through the DRDO's recently operationalised COVID Hospital. Delhi Government expressed gratitude for the timely support of the Centre for augmenting their hospital beds capacity, during last year and this year. Their efforts to ramp up testing and reduce the turnaround time for the test results were also outlined.</span><br />