With Covid positivity and Case Fatality Rate (CFR) rates inPunjab hitting 7.7% and 2% respectively in the last week, Punjab ChiefMinister, Captain Amarinder Singh, on Wednesday directed the health departmentto further increase the vaccination drive and target vaccinating 2 lakhpatients per day. He also directed the officials to increase the sampling to50,000 per day, besides vigorously pursuing contact tracing to 30 people perpositive patient.
Expressing concern at the high CFR rate, the Chief Ministersaid these deaths, many of which are avoidable with timely treatment, pain him.He directed Chief Secretary, Vini Mahajan, to undertake a massive publicawareness campaign to motivate people to approach hospitals at early stages. Hesaid the quality of health care in hospitals also needs to be improved and thelist of approved hospitals with required facilities should be put out in thepublic domain. He said death audit should be done by all districts and privatefacilities which are not participating in the expert group discussions shouldbe encouraged to do so.
The Chief Minister, who was informed by the healthdepartment that PGI was refusing to admit patients from Punjab, despite beingreferred through proper channels, said that he would take up the matter withthe Prime Minister at tomorrow’s video conferencing meeting and would requesthim to direct the hospital to reserve at least 50 ICU beds for patientsreferred by the state government.
Chairing the weekly Covid review meeting with officials ofHealth Department and medical experts, the Chief Minister said though under thecurrent vaccination drive about 90,000 people were being vaccinated per day,this needed to be raised to 2 lakh people per day. “Vaccination is the only wayto prevent the spread”, he said directing the health department to takeimmediate steps to speed up the drive.
He also asked the Chief Secretary to address the issue ofvaccination hesitancy by undertaking well designed media campaigns. He said hewould again urge the union government for relaxation in the age criteria forvaccinating people under the age of 45 years in areas showing weekly doublingof positivity rate. He reiterated his demand that the union government shouldallow vaccinations to all potential super-spreaders - students above 18 years,teachers, councillors, sarpanches etc.
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On the issue of vaccination supply, Vini Mahajan informedthe chief minister that the union government had assured that the state wouldnot face any shortage.
The chief minister was assured by the health department thatdaily sampling would be increased to 50,000 – 35,000 RTPCR and 15,000 RapidAntigen Tests. He was however, informed that government of India’s institutions- IISER, IMTech, AIIMS, PGIMER – were sampling only 100 samples/day, which islow, and the matter was being taken up with the centre.
DGP Dinkar Gupta informed the chief minister that alldistricts were taking penal action for violation of Covid protocols and so far,2.03 lakhs people had been taken for RTPCR tests after they were found notwearing masks in public. He also said that 43,000 challans had been issued anda fine of Rs 3.60 crores collected, besides registration of 206 FIRs and arrestof 246 people.
On the vaccination front, Gupta said 77% of the policepersonnel had been vaccinated with the first dose and of these 26% had takenthe second shot too.
The meeting was also attended by Cabinet Ministers, OP Soni(Medical Education) and Balbir Sidhu (Health), medical experts, Dr K K Talwarand Dr Raj Bahadur and Principal Health Secretary, Hussan Lal.