New Delhi:Punjab Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh confirms community spreading of Coronavirus in the state, saying, "Out of the 27 positive cases of coronavirus that was reported yesterday most of them are of community transmission as they have no travel history and this is our worry."
Pointing out the 27 positive cases reported on Thursday, the Punjab CM described it as an indication of the state moving into the direction of community transmission saying that the situation could seriously worsen in the coming weeks. He further added, "The predictions are horrendous, but we are doing our best. We'll start doing rapid testing from next week."
He also informed that experts from the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh, projected that COVID-19 cases may peak by mid-September which can infect around 58% of the country's population and 87% of people in Punjab.
With regard to testing, Capt Amarinder Singh admitted that 2,877 tests conducted so far were simply not enough, given Punjab has a population of 2.8 crores. He said that 25,000 rapid testing kits are also expected to arrive soon, which will first be used for the hotspots of the state.
While asserting over the need of extension of lockdown, he said that the state government is seriously thinking of the extension of lockdown. However, the final decision will be taken in the Cabinet meeting of Punjab, which will be held today.
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He said that the government is looking for the ways to lift the lockdown in a phase-wise manner so that it could not affect the harvesting and procurement of crops. "A high powered committee with several doctors Medical and other experts was examining the situation and will soon submit its report on the lockdown exit strategy," said Amarinder Singh, on Friday.
He also mentioned that the state government is gearing up to handle the bumper harvest of crops during the lockdown. He said that the state would be going in for district wise and village wise marketing or procurement of crops. the number of Mandis have been increased from 1800 to 3800 this year, in the view of COVID-19 pandemic, where police personnel and district officials will be on duty to ensure that precautionary measures have been taken there.
On the question over the contribution of Tablighi Jamat to the spread of COVID-19, Punjab's CM revealed that his government had received the list of 651 people who participated in the event out of which 636 had so far been traced and 27 of them have been found positive of the disease.
He also called the Rs 15,000 crore package, given by the Union Government for health infrastructure, "absolutely insufficient". He said, "No state has the resources needed to fight this battle, without the help of Central Government and they have to come forward to help all the states by issuing more funds to them."
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