CHANDIGARH: The Centre on Wednesday increased vaccine allocation to Punjab by 25% after Punjab CM Capt Amarinder Singh met Union Health and Family Welfare Minister Mansukh Mandaviya and requested more vaccine doses in light of the upcoming festival season and the fact that about 26 lakh people are overdue in the state for the second dose.
Punjab’s per capita vaccination stood at 27.1, while that of Haryana is 35.2, Delhi’s 39.4, Jammu and Kashmir 43.7, Himachal Pradesh 62.0 and Rajasthan 35.1.
Till August 7, Punjab has received only 1,00,73,821 doses of Covid vaccines as against Haryana’s 1,27,94,804, Delhi’s 1,06,79,728, J&K’s 66,90,063, Himachal Pradesh’s 55,51,177 and Rajasthan’s 34,954,868 doses.
Amarinder sought the supply of 55 lakh doses of Covid vaccine on priority for his state. Mandaviya assured Amarinder of all help in this regard and said that while supplies would ease from the next month, he would fulfill the state’s requirement by October 31 and ordered the department to immediately increase Punjab’s allocation to meet its urgent requirement.
Amarinder said with sufficient supplies, the state government could arrange to vaccinate 5 to 7 lakh people every day.
He pointed out that the allocation of vaccines for Punjab for the month of August currently stood at 20,47,060 doses of Covishield, while around 26 lakh doses of this were required just for those whose second dose was overdue.
Citing data, Amarinder said Punjab has relatively very less allocation of vaccines (and hence very low per capita vaccination) as compared to the other states, and its vaccine allocation needs to be increased to cover more population and catch up with other states.
He further requested that Punjab be allowed access to the COWIN portal for analytical purposes and also urged Mandaviya to considerably favourably Punjab’s request for setting up a Bulk Drug Park at Bathinda.
The state government had applied in October 2020 to set up the park over a 1,320-acre land at Bathinda, with the Council of Ministers approving attractive incentives for the same, he pointed out.
Meanwhile, the Punjab government on Wednesday ordered to conduct at least 10,000 RT-PCR tests at state schools daily, after no less than 26 students tested positive for coronavirus in the past two days.
On Tuesday, 20 students of two schools in Ludhiana tested positive for COVID-19.
Six students of a government school were found infected with the disease in Hoshiarpur on Wednesday.
The Punjab government had reopened schools for all classes in the state from August 2.
Chairing a coronavirus review meeting, Punjab Chief Secretary Vini Mahajan issued directions for conducting at least 10,000 Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) tests daily at schools in the state, according to a statement.
The chief secretary also asked deputy commissioners to ensure that only fully vaccinated staff is allowed to attend the schools.
Asking the departments concerned to step up RT-PCR testing, Mahajan said the target of 40,000 samples per day in the state must be achieved.
Mahajan also expressed concern over the movement of people to Punjab from neighbouring states where virus cases are once again on the rise, the statement said.
She asked officials concerned to keep a close watch on the positivity rate ahead of the festival season when extra vigil is required to prevent a surge in virus cases.
Instructing all districts to continue aggressive testing and contact tracing, she said epidemiologists have been appointed and all-out efforts should be made to thwart the possible third Covid wave.
Quoting a forecast from the University of Cambridge, Mahajan said new cases can be expected to double in about 64 days (under the assumption that the growth rate remains constant).
She expressed satisfaction over the fact that 2,45,823 samples have been taken from August 3 to 9 and only 352 tested positive, which accounted for a positivity rate of 0.1 per cent.
Stressing the need to further ramp up the health infrastructure, she said each district should aim to augment the bed capacity by 25 per cent from the second wave's peak demand.
She also asked officials to focus on further increasing medical oxygen availability in government and private hospitals.
The state on Wednesday registered a jump in COVID-19 infections, 107 cases surfacing in the state in the last 24 hours, taking the tally to 5,99,678.
With no Covid-related death reported on Wednesday, the toll stood at 16,325, according to the health bulletin.
The toll, however, included three deaths, which were not reported earlier, as per the bulletin.
Ludhiana reported the maximum 34 cases, followed by nine in Amritsar and eight each in Bathinda and Fazilka.
The state saw 54, 31 and 74 infections on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday respectively.
It registered 118 cases on July 17 and since then, the state has been witnessing less than 100 infections daily.
With the rise in the number of infections, the active cases rose to 517 from 460 Tuesday.
With 45 recoveries from the infection, the number of cured persons reached 5,82,836 Wednesday, as per the bulletin.
Meanwhile, Chandigarh reported five cases of COVID-19, taking the total count to 61,997, it said.
With no death reported on Wednesday, the toll figure stood at 811.
The number of active cases in the city was 35 while the number of cured persons was 61,151.
(With PTI Inputs)