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Punjab reports 2,490 fresh Covid-19 cases, state tally tops 207,800
In 11 worst-hit districts of Punjab, the government has ordered a complete ban on all social gatherings, except for funerals and weddings.
Punjab logged 2,490 new cases of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) in the last 24 hours, which took the state’s infection tally to 207,888, according to the latest figures released by the state health department on Friday. A total of 38 fatalities were recorded during the same period pushing the total tally to 6,242.
Earlier in the day, the Punjab government placed 11 districts, reporting the maximum number of cases, under a night curfew beginning Saturday. Ludhiana, Jalandhar, Patiala, Mohali, Amritsar, Hoshiarpur, Kapurthala, SBS Nagar, Fatehgarh Sahib, Ropar, and Moga are the districts where the night curfew will be imposed.
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In these 11 worst-hit districts, the government has ordered a complete ban on all social gatherings, except for funerals and weddings, where only 20 people will be allowed. The state government has also ordered the closure of all educational institutes, except medical and nursing colleges, till March 31.
As the cases continue to soar, chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh has told all private, government hospitals and health facilities to offer vaccination services for at least eight hours daily throughout the week till March 31. He has also directed police and health authorities to take those people who are found without marks in public areas to the nearest RT-PCR testing facility for taking nasopharyngeal swabs to ensure that they are not asymptomatic.
The stricter norms were announced after the chief minister held a review meeting with state officials. “We have to be prepared for this second surge,” Singh said during the meeting, highlighting the fact that the 1918 Spanish flu had four spikes. “We have to be prepared for a long battle,” he warned.
Punjab is among the three states that are facing the risk of becoming the next Covid-19 hotspots, according to an HT analysis. The daily case trajectory in the northern state grew 531% in the last 30 days (the highest in the country), while its weekly average positivity rate went up 4.7 percentage points in the same time period, the second-highest increase in India only after Maharashtra.
