Punjab Government on Tuesday decided to extend the prevailing COVID restrictions till July 10, while announcing some more relaxations, including opening of bars, pubs, and ahatas at 50 percent capacity; allowing opening of skill development centres and universities, beginning July 1.
The Skill Development Centres and Universities have been allowed to open conditional to the staff and students having taken at least one dose of vaccine. Already, the IELTS coaching institutes were allowed to be opened, subject to students and staff having taken at least one dose of vaccine. The COVID curbs were extended after the cases of Delta Plus variant coming to light in Punjab,
Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh, while announcing relaxations at a high-level COVID review meeting, made it clear that the bars, pubs and ahatas would have to strictly maintain social distancing protocols, and waiters, servers or other employees should have taken at least one dose of the COVID vaccine.
He made it clear that it would be the responsibility of the owners to ensure that the conditions are met.
Expressing satisfaction over the decline in positivity to less than one percent, with overall fall in active cases, the Chief Minister noted that the positivity rate in some districts still remained over one percent.
Health Secretary Hussan Lal, in a brief presentation earlier, said that the Department had formulated a comprehensive surveillance strategy to keep a check on the potential third wave drivers. These drivers include behavioural change after the second wave, seasonal changes, re-infection due to waning of immunity and viral mutations.
The Chief Minister asked the Department to work on restrictions computed on area basis (ward, village, block, town, city), going beyond the micro containment and containment strategies being followed so far.
Capt Amarinder asked the Department to give appointments and postings, at the earliest, to the 128 specialist doctors recently selected by the Dr KK Talwar committee. Regular recruitment should also continue at all levels, he added.
Medical Education and Research Minister OP Soni said that 80 percent of the preparations needed to tackle the third wave were already completed in the Government Medical Colleges of the state.
Dr Talwar told the meeting that it was very difficult to predict the third wave due to mutation, with the Delta Plus variant already reported from 12 countries and 52 cases in Maharashtra. Urging extreme caution, he said that it was necessary to see how the mutant behaves. As of now, the existing vaccines were showing effectiveness against the present variants, he said.
