Punjab Government on Wednesday issued the instructions to cancel the holidays or leaves of all the key staff engaged in the reporting and management for COVID-19 (Corona Virus Disease).
The State Health and Family Welfare Minister Balbir Singh Sidhu said that in wake of COVID-19, staff working for surveillance of corona virus, reporting, tracing, and management would only be granted the leave after getting sanction from the Directorate Health Services so that screening as well as test process of the suspected passengers would not be affected.The State Surveillance Unit of Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme (IDSP) will be monitoring the situation and all the surveillance activities in the State for Corona Virus, he said.
Revealing about the screening at high-risk areas, the Cabinet Minister said that till date, a total of 22,236 passengers have been screened at International Airports of Amritsar and Mohali. In all, 16,549 passengers have been screened at Attari-Wagah Border, Amritsar, and 5,687 passengers at Dera Baba Nanak Check post in Gurdaspur.
Sidhu said that of the 1517 passengers those have travel history of China or transit stay at Airports, 35 samples were collected for testing and these all samples have been reported negative by NIV, Pune.A total of 1109 passengers have crossed the observation period of 14 days so far and remaining passengers have been kept under home isolation and observation of the Health Department.
“To expedite the process of sample testing, the Central Government has now made a provision of getting samples tested at All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Delhi, and one sample each from the Jalandhar and Amritsar was sent to the AIIMS which have tested negative for corona,” he said, adding that till date, no confirmed case of Corona has been reported from the state of Punjab. Pertinently, the World Health Organisation has today changed the Corona Virus name from novel corona virus (2019-nCoV) to COVID-19 (Corona Virus Disease).