Covid: Punjab health dept alerts civil surgeons

Chandigarh: In view of the sudden spurt of Covid cases being witnessed in China and various other countries, the Punjab health and family welfare department on Wednesday issued directions to all the civil surgeons in the state to ensure that the samples of all positive cases are sent to the designated Indian SARS-COV-2 Genomics Consortium(INSACOG) Genome Sequencing Laboratories(IGSLS) that are mapped to the districts on daily basis.

Punjab has till date recorded 20,513 deaths from Covid and a total of 7,85,375 people were detected positive out of the total over 2.10 crore samples taken for tests. No Covid positive case was detected in Punjab on Wednesday.

In a communication issued to all the civil surgeons and sample testing laboratories, director health and family welfare cited a letter received from the Union health and family welfare secretary Rajesh Bhushan on Tuesday highlighting the sudden increase of Covid cases in Japan, USA, Republic of Korea, Brazil and China. The Union health secretary had written to all the states mentioning that India with its focus on five-fold strategy of test-track-treat-vaccination and adherence to Covid appropriate behaviour has been able to restrict the transmission of Covid-19 virus and is having around 1,200 cases on a weekly basis. But the public health challenge of Covid-19 still persists around the world with around 35 lakh cases reported weekly. He had mentioned that the ‘Operational Guidelines for Revised Surveillance Strategy in context of Covid- 19’ in June this year calls for an early detection, isolation, testing, and timely management of cases.