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40 Covid-recovered Punjab Police personnel offer to donate plasma in response to CM’s appeal
Jalandhar Rural takes the lead with SSP himself showing the way after recovery from coronavirus infection
Chandigarh: Responding to Punjab chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh’s appeal, 40 police personnel, who recently recovered from Covid-19 infection, have offered to donate their blood plasma to save the lives of others infected with coronavirus.
Most of the donors are from Jalandhar Rural, with SSP Navjot Singh Mahal leading the way after recovering from the infection.
Director general of police (DGP) Dinkar Gupta, who has been reaching out to the personnel to donate plasma after their mandatory two-week recovery period ends, said that within 24 hours of the SSP, Jalandhar Rural, coming forward to commit to plasma donation, 40 other police personnel have volunteered.
The blood plasma of two cops – assistant sub inspector (ASI) Ram Lal and Punjab home guard (PHG) Lakhwinder Singh – had already been taken.
All 33 personnel who recovered from Covid-19 in Jalandhar Rural had committed to plasma donation, the DGP said, adding an increasing number of plasma donors were coming in from the police department in other districts, too. In Batala, both the cops who have recovered have volunteered to donate plasma while in Gurdaspur, of the two personnel infected, one has recovered and has offered to donate his plasma.
Kapurthala has seen 10 of the 14 infected cops recovered and three of them are listed as volunteers, while the remaining seven had to be excluded as they were found to have co-morbid conditions.
At present, Jalandhar Rural has seven active cases and Batala has four.
SPECIAL LINK CREATED FOR VOLUNTEERS
A special link has been created by Punjab Police for volunteers to donate plasma, according to the DGP.
Gupta said a campaign had been launched to create awareness among the cured police personnel to come forward for this noble cause.
With most of the volunteers asymptomatic, their inherent immunity was higher, according to experts.
As on July 28, a total of 831 Punjab Police personnel had tested Covid positive, of whom 336 had recovered. Of these, 303 had recovered till two weeks ago, indicating that the number of plasma donors could go up significantly in the next few days. At present, the department has 495 active cases.
