Context: Recently,Minister of State for Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions released the National Preparedness Survey on COVID 19 - Responses of District Collectors and IAS Officers.
About National Corona Survey

• The survey was conducted in 410 districts within 3 working days to attain a bird’s eye view of the governance challenges of the nation while coping with the COVID-19 pandemic.

Objectives of the Survey

• To develop a comparative analysis of COVID 19 preparedness across States.
• To highlight the main priorities and constraints of COVID 19 preparedness, as they are perceived by the civil servants working in the field.
• To access enabling factors in making institutional/logistics/hospital preparedness, etc.
• To capture trends to identify systemic and process related deficiencies, in combating COVID 19 in the districts of India.

Key Highlights of the survey 

• The survey was conducted across all districts of India, with responses from 410 civil servants who are providing field level leadership. 
• District Collectors and IAS officers of (2014-2018) batches who have served as Assistant Secretaries in Government of India participated in the survey.
• The survey was conducted by distributing questionnaire to district magistrates/collectors. They were asked to register into portals and submit replies. 

The findings of the survey are as follows

• The people’s awareness about the virus has increased 
• 75% said people are taking precautions 
• 69% said that the lock down is being handled in a peaceful way
• Only 50% agreed on the adequacy of availability
• The main concern of the survey was the non-availability of adequate ventilator machines.