Despite tall claims and proclamations, the Punjab government has failed in curtailing the rampant surge of COVID-19 cases with around 1,000 cases being reported daily over the last five days.
While the government has seemingly taken the right moves by imposing night curfew in high-risk districts like Ludhiana, Patiala and Jalandhar, unchecked protests which formed large gatherings have threatened the risk of massive community spread.
While the state government had banned non-urgent gatherings and protests —requesting the maintenance of social distancing—political parties including the ruling Congress have disregarded these orders with communities like farmers protesting in huge numbers.
The state today reported around 1,000 cases along with 20 deaths—highlighting the requirement of a better COVID-19 management strategy. The state, as of now, is seeking redemption by increasing testing and has set a target of 20,000 tests per day starting Tuesday.
The districts of Ludhiana and Patiala have been put on high alert with 316 and 204 cases reported in last 24 hours.
On Monday, Health minister Balbir Sidhu and Medical Education and Research minister O.P. Soni jointly inaugurated four labs for increased testing.
“The pace of viral tests for COVID-19 would now escalate from existing 16,000 tests to 20,000 tests per day,” said Soni.
Health minister Sidhu, however, claims that the state is doing a large number of viral tests that results in the surfacing of a large number of cases. Infected people are being isolated from others and timely tests are being conducted, thus reducing the spread.
It may be noted that as per the state bulletin 98,748 samples have been tested in past 10 days out of which 8770 have tested positive taking the infectivity rate to 8.8 percent. While it's just an average of 9900 tests per day against the claims of 16000 per day. Authorities however insist they are conducting more tests and antigen test numbers are not included in the bulletin. Punjab has 8550 active patients till date with 604 casualties.
What however comes as a major setback, is the reported resistance of suspects to testing, especially towards taking antigen testes.
“Despite all awareness and announcements, people even with mild symptoms are not going for testing and come to us only when symptoms are severe or the situation is out of hands. This leads to high mortality as many of the co-morbid patients admitted contracted COVID-19. We are setting up a new virology lab and will be increasing tests by almost 4,000 a day. We are also reviewing the possibility of testing all residents of high risk or micro containment zones,” state COVID-19 nodal officer Dr Rajesh Bhaskar told THE WEEK.
