Punjab leads India with 78 percent recovery rate of covid-19 patients: Balbir Singh Sidhu

Chandigarh: With the tireless efforts made by the State Government, Punjab became the leading State in India to battle Corona virus by achieving 78 percent recovery rate of COVID-19 patients.
 
Giving details in press communiqué, the Health Minister Mr. Balbir Singh Sidhu said that Captain Amarinder Singh led Punjab Government is well prepared to battle the Corona virus pandemic under which 1,57,13,789 persons have been screened by teams of Health department in the month of April, 2020. Out of this, 9,593 were found to have symptoms and referred for further management and sampling. He said that there have been 1980 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the state so far and 52,955 persons have been tested out of which 48,813 are found negative. He said that out of 1980 COVID-19 patients, 1557 cases were cured which is among highest recovery rate in India.
 
Mr. Balbir Singh Sidhu further said that ‘Risk Stratified Random Sampling’ needs to be done (frequent travellers, frontline workers, people with co-morbidity and people living in densely populated areas etc) across the State and focus would be kept on high risk areas and high risk individuals to further prevent the spread of corona virus. Instructions have been issued to Civil Surgeons in this regard.
 
Revealing about the facts of containment zone, he said that State government has defined only the containment zone and now, no red/orange/green zones. Containment zone is an area around epicenter of 15 cases or more in a village/ward. It can also be a small group of adjacent villages/wards. Then there should be a buffer zone which will be a concentric area around containment zone and the radius of buffer zone may be up to 1 KM. He said that period of containment would be of minimum 14 days. If in last week there is no new case or one new case it shall be opened. Otherwise period of containment would be extended by one week at a time.
 
The Health Minister said that out of 4218 Nanded returnees, 1252 turned out to be positive for COVID-19. All of them have been declared cured and sent to their homes. Majority of cases in Punjab are from outside.