As Covid cases and deaths continue to escalate, with the UK strain emerging the most prevalent in the State, Punjab Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh on Tuesday ordered extension of curbs till April 10, while directing the Health Department to increase the number of vaccination sites to target the priority categories on an urgent basis.

With this, the restrictions announced by the Chief Minister on march 19, regarding closure of all educational institutions including schools and colleges barring medical and nursing colleges, and enforcement of night curfew in worst affected districts, among other things, would continue for another ten days. Earlier, the curbs were announced till March end.

Besides, the cinema and mall capacities were reduced, besides imposing a complete ban on social gatherings in 11 districts worst affected by the fresh surge in cases.

Reviewing the Covid situation with the Chief Secretary Vini Mahajan and other top officials, the Chief Minister said all restrictions that were in place till March 31 will now remain in force till April 10, after which they would be again reviewed. He also ordered the launch of a vaccination drive in the prisons, in the wake of 40 women in Patiala’s Nabha Open Jail testing positive for the novel coronavirus.

Expressing grave concern over the situation, Capt Amarinder asked the Chief Secretary to issue necessary directions for carrying out testing and vaccination in busy market areas along with other crowded places.

He asked all Deputy Commissioner and Civil Surgeons to identify places where mobile Covid Vaccination Centres can be created, such as police lines, colleges and universities, bigger industrial units, bus stands, and railway stations, PRTC or Punjab Roadways bus depots, market places, etc to ramp up vaccination.

All eligible Government employees, and other categories which he had requested for inclusion in vaccine coverage (such as judges, teachers etc), should be facilitated in getting vaccination to the extent of being eligible on account of being over 45 years of age, said the Chief Minister.

Notably, the latest data shows the UK strain of the virus to be the most prevalent in the State. While 326 of the 401 Covid positive samples sent initially to National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) for genome sequencing were found positive for the UK variant, subsequently of the 95 samples sent to the Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (IGIB) for genome sequencing, 85 samples were found to be positive for the same.

The meeting was informed that the positive cases and deaths were rising rapidly in some of the districts, with projections presented by CMC Ludhiana showing a steep rise in the number of cases and peak around April 6.

The number would be decreasing by mid or late May 2021, as per the estimates, which suggest that Jalandhar, Ludhiana, Patiala, Sahibzada Ajit Singh Nagar (Mohali), Hoshiarpur, and Kapurthala are expected to contribute more cases and positivity is likely to be high in the younger population of 40 years of age or less.

State DGP Dinkar Gupta apprised that since the last meeting, when the decision to challan the Covid protocol offenders along with RT-PCR testing was taken, 90,360 persons had been challaned and tested for Covid. He requested for a special vaccination drive in the police lines.

Dr KK Talwar, Adviser Health and Medical Education to the Government of Punjab, has suggested that routine non-Covid treatment in some of the selected private hospitals may be deferred by two-four weeks, and more ambulances be made available to the District Hospitals where there are no Medical Colleges.

The Chief Minister was assured that the Health Department is ready to increase RT-PCR testing to 35,000 tests per day.