Chandigarh, March 31: Taking strong exception to theCentre’s criticism of his government’s management of the Covid surge, PunjabChief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh on Wednesday said not only was the stateconsistently doing more tests per million than the national average, but thesituation would perhaps have been better had the Government of India notdelayed opening up of vaccination for 45+ age group.
Had the central government acceded the state’s request forallowing vaccination of all 50+ category population earlier, instead ofdelaying the decision to include 45+ age population by almost two months, thesituation would perhaps have been better than present, he said.
He was reacting to the Government of India’s allegation thatthe State Government was not doing enough CoViD testing and isolating affectedpeople.
The Chief Minister pointed out that his government had putsevere restrictions on social gatherings and closed all educationalinstitutions, with night curfews imposed from 9 pm to 5 am in severely affected11 districts.
He further observed that the state government had beenrepeatedly requesting GoI in writing, as well as in meetings attended by theChief Secretary, that the current strategy of immunization needs review.Vaccination in a campaign that covers all age groups in selected areas willlead to better outcomes than the periodic cycles of vaccination targeting asmall section of the population at each cycle, he stressed, underlining theneed for such approach in any area where weekly testing shows a doubling ofpositivity rate.
He reiterated his demand for permission for occupation-basedimmunization for school and college students and Teachers, Judges, Bus driversand Conductors, Panches/ Sarpanches, Mayors/ Municipal Committee, Presidents/Counsellors, MLAs, MPs etc. everywhere.
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Captain Amarinder also took note of the delay in receivingreports of genome sequencing. Of the 874 samples sent, only 588 reports hadbeen received so far, of which 411 samples were found positive for B.1.1.7 (UK Variant and 2 samples positive forN440K. The implication of presence of UK variant mutant needs to be looked intoand appropriate advice is required to be shared with the State, the ChiefMinister urged the Centre.
Citing the factual position on the testing front, CaptainAmarinder noted that during the first peak, which happened in September 2020,the positivity rate was around 10 and the state was testing 30,000 CoViDsamples per day. Now, when the positivity is over 7%, the state is testingaround 40,000 CoViD samples per day. The State is consistently testing around90% RT-PCR and about 10% RAT, and its per million testing is 1,96,667 while thenational average is 1,82,296, he pointed out.
The State had very limited capacity of testing RT-PCR whenthis pandemic started. It was about 40samples per day and within a very short span of time, the state ramped up itsown RT-PCR testing capacity to more than 25,000 tests per day. The state is consistently utilizing itsoptimal RT-PCR capacity. The GoI institutions like IISER, IMTech, PGIMER aresupporting the state to the extent of only about 100 samples per day, said theChief Minister, adding that the stat can increase RAT testing to any level if there is need to doso.
Further, he pointed out that during the first peak inSeptember 2020, Punjab had increased contact tracing to 10 contacts perpositive case. Now, during the secondpeak, “we are tracing more than 15 contacts per positive case,” he added.