Jalandhar Even as the state government has directed districts to ramp up testing for covid-19, the Jalandhar health department has been unable to meet its allocated target of 3,000 tests for a day. The district has 6,623 cases and seen 165 deaths till August 31 evening.
Over the past two months, the district’s average has been 800 tests per day. The district has just one testing lab that has a capacity of 100-150 tests a day. This has led to a delay in tracing and shifting positive cases and increases the risk of virus spread.
On most days over the last fortnight, the sample collection was about 400. For only five days, the figure went above 1,000 samples. The department collected 433 and 428 samples on Sunday and Saturday, respectively. Only 89 samples were collected on Monday.
Jalandhar is lagging behind Ludhiana, the worst-hit district in sample collection, as its per day positive ratio is higher, said a senior health official. At 1.37 lakh samples collected, Ludhiana has 407.4 cases for every 1 lakh population, while Jalandhar at 74,405 samples, has 977 cases per lakh. The data are from Punjab Covid-19 Status Report till August 26.
There is a backlog of around 1,000 samples as authorities have to send most samples to Faridkot medical college for testing, which generally takes two days in generating result. “There are 13 micro-containment zones in the district, but all houses have not been examined. There will be a spike in covid cases and it is possible that the district will surpass Ludhiana, if authorities intensify the contact-tracing on a daily basis,” said a senior administration official.
{{/usCountry}}There is a backlog of around 1,000 samples as authorities have to send most samples to Faridkot medical college for testing, which generally takes two days in generating result. “There are 13 micro-containment zones in the district, but all houses have not been examined. There will be a spike in covid cases and it is possible that the district will surpass Ludhiana, if authorities intensify the contact-tracing on a daily basis,” said a senior administration official.
{{/usCountry}}Jalandhar civil surgeon Dr Gurinder Kaur Chawla said they were collaborating with the health department and 15 more teams will be assigned to the job. Presently, 39 teams comprising three-four health staff in a team collect covid samples.
State covid-19 nodal officer Dr Rajesh Bhaskar said covid sampling was being intensified across the state.
In a silver lining for Jalandhar, it is the only district in the state that has level-3 beds for critical patients, in the civil hospital, after the three medical colleges in Amritsar, Patiala and Faridkot.