In order to arrest the Covid fatality rate in Punjab, theChief Secretary, Ms Vini Mahajan, on Friday directed the Health Department tofurther ramp up the ongoing vaccination drive so as to achieve the target ofvaccinating 2 lakh persons per day as instructed by the Chief Minister CaptainAmarinder Singh.
She announced a special fund of Rs 1 crore to everydistrict for effective Covid management in the state. “There is no constraintof funds to fight the pandemic,” she asserted, while chairing a high-levelmeeting to review the current Covid situation in the state, here on Friday.
The Chief Secretary also directed the Health Department toobserve two days (Tuesday and Friday) every week as mega vaccination days to coverthe maximum people to defeat the virus. She also set the state’s weeklyinoculation target to more than 16 lakh beneficiaries for the month of April.
Urging the eligible persons to get vaccinated at theearliest as vaccination was undertaken on all 7 days of week and no age limitwas imposed for vaccination of health and frontline workers, she said thehigher authorities can authorise the vulnerable employees from essentialworkers’ list for vaccination registration.
Chairing the meeting of Administrative Secretaries, DeputyCommissioners, Commissioners of Police, Senior Superintendents of Police andother senior officials of the state, the Chief Secretary directed the officialmachinery to increase the sampling to 50,000 per day, besides actively pursuingcontact tracing to at least 20 persons per positive patient and test them asper the protocol so as to keep the further spread of virus under check.
The meeting was informed that 16 lakh persons have beenvaccinated in the state so far and vaccination and adherence to Covid norms wasthe only way to prevent the further spread of the virus.
She directed the concerned departments to address the issueof vaccination hesitancy by undertaking well-planned media campaigns.
Asking for strict monitoring of home isolated patients, theChief Secretary instructed the Health Department to optimally utilise manpowerof other departments, if it faced shortage of staff. Health officials willensure close monitoring of home isolated patients. They will visit every homeisolated patient three times in ten days. If the condition of any patientdeteriorates, the transfer to hospital in the fastest way possible will beensured to bring down fatality rate, she emphasised.
Principal Secretary, Health and Family Welfare, Hussan Lal,apprised the Chief Secretary that 50,000 more Fateh kits were being procuredfor home isolated patients and there was no shortage of Covid vaccine in thestate. He asked the district administrations to update eVin portal daily forseamless vaccination supply. “Geo-fencing of home isolated patients was beingdone through the COVA mobile app to prevent the infected person to mingle withothers,” he added.
Assuring all possible help from the police force in thefight against Covid, the Director General of Police (DGP), Mr Dinkar Gupta,said as many as 65,611 police personnel have already got their first dose ofCovid vaccine, which accounted for 79 per cent of the total police force. Onthe direction of Punjab Chief Minister, the police had been undertaking a driveto enforce appropriate Covid behaviour under which face mask violators werebeing taken to testing centres, besides challaning them.
The Additional Chief Secretaries Ravneet Kaur (Forests andWildlife), Sanjay Kumar (Tourism and Cultural Affairs), Anirudh Tewari(Development), Seema Jain (Rural Development and Panchayat), PrincipalSecretaries KAP Sinha (Finance), DK Tiwari (Medical Education and Research) andother senior officials also attended the meeting.