Centre doing everything possible: Krishna Saagar Rao

Hyderabad: Telangana BJP state chief spokesperson K Krishna Saagar Rao said Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government has done everything possible to contain Covid-19. However, the Central government has its limitations in a federal system.

In a statement on Monday, he said that it is the responsibility of state governments to ramp up the health infrastructure and be prepared for the current and future Covid-19 infection waves.

"A few State Governments like Telangana State are stuck in serious in-action for the past one year, and it is a normalized pattern for their style of misgovernance. There are no extra beds or ICUs planned in advance by the Telangana State Government, despite the steep rise of infection in Telangana State, the second time around," Krishna Saagar Rao said.

He said oxygen is a commercial commodity, the Central government neither produces it nor responsible for its availability. Any commodity's availability or non-availability is based on demand and supply.

However, as the situation of oxygen availability has reduced with a sudden spike in demand due to the second wave of Covid, the central government has immediately acted and banned oxygen's industrial use. "The government is also ensuring the producers' ramp up their production scale of oxygen, to restore the availability.

National Governments across the world are in a similar situation, including the top economic powers," he said.

"Covid-19 is a contagious global endemic, national governments can at the most advocate regulation, propagate public caution, ask states to expand health infrastructure and promote vaccination. They can neither arrest the growth of infection nor end the contagion by themselves," he said.

"It is important for individual citizens also to understand that personal caution, self-regulation, immunity-boosting nutrition and health management, is essential to protect themselves from infection and subsequent recovery process," he added.