In the wake of covid19 pandemic, the central government has allocated 908 ventilators to J&K of which 892 have been installed across healthcare institutions in the UT.
Prior to pandemic, Kashmir had around 100 ventilators.
According to Union Health and Family Welfare, the central government has allocated 908 ventilators. All the ventilators have been delivered to the J&K government and 892 stand installed.
Besides, 11.14 lakh N95 masks, 6.04 PPE kits and 27.8 HCQ tablets were supplied to J&K post outbreak of pandemic till January 24, 2021.
To overcome shortage of medical oxygen in the hospitals, the central government has supplied 1644 B-type cylinders and 546 b-type oxygen cylinders. “33500 truenat COVID cartridges, 2600 xpert cartridges were also supplied to J&K”.
The union government has also released Rs 167 crore grant-in-aid to J&K under ‘India’s COVID19 Emergency Response and Health System Preparedness Package’ to fight pandemic.
In J&K, 1944 persons died due to covid19 so far.
The funds and commodities have been allocated to J&K under various components of the package. The Rs 15,000 crore ‘India COVID19 Emergency Response and Health System Preparedness Package’ was approved by the union cabinet on 22 April 2020 with an objective to prevent, detect and respond to the threat posed by COVID-19.
Under the Package, Rs 6,309.90 crore stand released to the states/UTs, through National Health Mission (NHM) as on 21 January 2021.
“It is highly likely that J&K will get more funds under the COVID emergency response,” a senior government official said, adding that “it was due to liberal funding by the central and UT government that J&K was able to carry out over 20,000 tests a day free of cost which included both Rapid Antigen and RT-PCR tests.”
As per the official data, 46.4 lakh persons were tested in Jammu and Kashmir since mid March when the first case of COVID was reported in Kashmir; out of these, 45.18 lakh tested negative.