Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed the country briefly after wrapping up a high-level meeting on COVID-19 with various Chief Ministers and government officials. The speech went over multiple areas like available treatments for the virus, home isolation guidelines and India’s preparedness.

-PM Modi briefly focused on traditional Indian home remedies that are usually used in households to treat various illnesses and said that “home-made ayurvedic remedies will also be helpful” during the pandemic.

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-Local containment measures were presented as a method to curb the spread of the omicron variant of COVID-19, which also ensure that the “livelihoods of people are not affected” and India’s economy is not impacted, PM Modi said.

-PM Modi suggested following a “pre-emptive, collective, and proactive approach” to tackle the current surge of COVID-19 across the country. 

-India’s COVID vaccinations numbers were also highlighted in the address on Thursday evening. The Prime Minister said, “We have vaccinated nearly 3 crore adolescents within 10 days. This shows India’s potential, our preparedness to deal with this challenge.”

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-PM Modi further requested the country’s assistance in expanding India’s vaccine drive, which will complete one year this week. “We need to further accelerate ‘Har Ghar Dastak’ programme to reach 100% vaccination coverage”, he said in the address.

-In addition to tackling omicron’s spike in India, the country also needs to prepare and “be ready for any future variants of this virus”, the Prime Minister said.

The address came at a time when India is inching close recording about 2,50,000 daily infections in the new COVID wave largely driven by the highly contagious omicron variant.

India on Thursday reported 2,47,417 new COVID-19 infections, the highest in 236 days, taking the total tally of COVID-19 cases to 3,63,17,927 which includes 5,488 cases of the omicron variant, according to the Union Health Ministry.