new delhi amid growing concerns over the omicron variant of sarscov2 a parliamentary committee has recommended that the efficacy of covid vaccines must be evaluated and the government conduct more research to examine the need for booster doses to contain the new strainthe parliamentary standing committee on health which presented its report on friday also said that concerns with regard to the new strain developing immunoescape mechanism should be critically addressedin view of loss of life during the second wave of the covid19 pandemic the committee noted that the measures taken by the health ministry to contain or prevent the spread of sarscov2 proved to be squarely inadequate and suggested that the focus should be on strengthening health infrastructure ensuring adequate availability of beds supply of oxygen cylinders and essential medicineswith the threat of a third wave looming around the government should utilise the time in strengthening public health infrastructurethis is evident from the fact that unlike the first wave which peaked in september 2020 of the covid19 pandemic which largely was restricted to urban areas where testing was introduced rapidly the second wave peaked in may largely spread through rural towns and villages it said in its reportthe committee thus observed that there is a dire need for improving the geographical spread of testing facilities in rural regions of the country it also recommended establishing sync between phcschcs with the vrdls in the statesin its report the committee said it apprehends that a rise in mutations in the virus may lead to reporting of more virulent and transmissible strain of the covid virus in the country and strongly recommended the union health ministry to adopt a zerotolerance covid19 policy and closely track covid cases across the countrythe committee believes that timely detection and isolation of potentially infectious people is very crucial in reducing the impact of the pandemic the importance of diagnostic testing therefore cannot be overlooked the panel said in its reportbesides the government must aggressively keep pushing the vaccination programme in terms of granting approval to more vaccines ramping up vaccine production enhancing delivery capacity and increasing the vaccination rate the committee said in its recommendationswith the incidence of highly mutated omicron b11529 strain of covid virus the committee strongly believes that the efficacy of the vaccines must be evaluated the concerns with regards to the new strain developing immunoescape mechanism need to be critically addressed it recommendedan efficient and widely deployed testing mechanism will go a long way in preventing the spread of the infection the panel notedthe committee said although the second wave came almost six months after the peak of the first wave indias testing infrastructure remained abysmal and highly insufficientthe report stated that to combat the current pandemic and other future emergencies india must realise its full testing capacity and augment this capacity even further and that the government should ensure that the testing should far outpace the growth of the cases to arrest future waves of covid earlythe committee also noted that