Punjab to adopt city preparedness plans to contain virus

CHANDIGARH: The Punjab Government is preparing a city preparedness plan to contain the spread of the virus in the urban slums of five districts of the state. These urban slums have reported for the maximum cases in the past few days. Balbir Singh Sidhu, Health Minister, Punjab, informed that 54 per cent of the corona positive cases of Punjab come from the urban slums of Amritsar, Ludhiana, Jalandhar, SAS Nagar and Patiala.

The government has worked on strengthening the sub-panel of the District Disaster Management Committees. The state health minister said that such dedicated committees to assist the fight against the pandemic at a city level by preparing specific epidemic preparedness plans, their implementation at city levels, monitoring and reporting. These committees would consult with the health department and take decisions regarding sample collection and testing in order to reduce the turn around time to less than 24 hours.These committees would include community medical facilities from medical colleges, World Health Organisation’s and National Polio Surveillance Project’s staff and prominent Non Government Organisations.

In a bid to curtail the virus spread, house-to-house surveillance campaigns and testing process would be reviewed daily in micro-containment and containment zones of the urban slums in the aforementioned cities under the City Preparedness Plan. The minister further explained that frontline workers to motivate people with mild symptoms to consult doctors. He also announced that 2.15 lakh samples have been collected so far and technical staff has been trained to enhance state’s collection capacity.