A vendor selling vegetables pushes his cart through a deserted market during the lockdown in India.
Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh on Friday addressed media through video conference and said that 27 people in the state were infected with the noval coronavirus through community transmission adding the state has prepared four phases to deal with the COVID-19 outbreak. Amarinder Singh said initially the relief in lockdown will only be for the farmers and that too in a phased manner in villages as the harvesting season will be approaching soon. He, however, said that no decision on lifting the lockdown has been taken yet as coronavirus cases in the state continue to rise. Punjab has over 132 coronavirus positive cases so far including 11 deaths while four people have recovered after getting infected with the deadly disease. India coronavirus confirmed cases meanwhile is reaching 6500-mark including 199 deaths and while 504 people have recovered from coronavirus.
CM Amarinder Sigh on coronavirus in Punjab | Highlights
- As of today, we have 651 people who came to Punjab from Nizamuddin, Delhi. We have traced 636 of them, 15 are still untraceable and we are looking for them.
- Punjab has 2.8 crore population. At the moment we have tested just 2,800 people which is nothing. We have asked the government's permission for two more medical colleges including Christian Medical College and one more to conduct coronavirus tests.
- Currently, only 1 patient is on ventilator support, 2 on pre-ventilator stage where they only require oxygen. We have 76 operational ventilators in government hospitals and 358 in private hospitals, total operational ventilators add up to 434.
- PGI Chandigarh experts project that COVID-19 may peak by mid-September. It can infect 58 per cent of the country's population.
- The government is feeding lakhs of people free irrespective of which state they are.
- The government has a stock of 62,000 N-95 masks in stock and an order for 2 lakh more has been placed.
- Hoshiarpur and Jalandhar and two other districts have the maximum number of NRIs, therefore, these areas are being monitored closely.
- One of the troubles that Punjab phased is the inflow of NRIs ever since coronavirus outbreak took place across nations. Initially, around 95,000 NRIs had come through Mohali and Amritsar while 45,000 NRIs had come via IGI, Delhi, therefore, screening of these people was a challenge as sometimes symptoms don't show up initially.
- Only good thing about coronavirus is that the drugs supply line has been broken.
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