by BERNAMA

NEW DELHI – India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday launched a customised crash course programme for COVID-19 frontline workers amid the ongoing second wave of the pandemic in the South Asian country.

Modi, who launched the course through video conferencing, said the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) changed rapidly and posed new challenges to India’s fight.

“COVID-19 is still there and there is a strong possibility of the virus being mutated. Therefore, the country’s preparations have to be ramped up in order to combat new challenges,” he said.

The customised crash course programme, Xinhua reported, aims to skill and upskill over 100,000 COVID-19 frontline workers across the South Asian country.

According to a statement issued by the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), the programme is planned to involve 111 training centres across the country.

“The training will be imparted to COVID-19 warriors in six customised job roles namely home care support, basic care support, advanced care support, emergency care support, sample collection support and medical equipment support,” the PMO said.

The programme will create skilled non-medical healthcare workers to meet the present and future needs of manpower in the health sector.

“We need a large pool of skilled workers who can deal with the challenges posed by COVID-19. It is necessary that new frontline workers are added to this pool to help the workers who are already giving their all to the fight,” Modi said.