With 10 new cases reported on Monday, Punjab’s tally stood at 180. Among these, a Punjab Police cop was also tested positive.
Maximum six cases were reported from Pathankot taking the district’s total tally to 22. Besides, two positive cases were confirmed from Jalandhar and one from Ludhiana. So far, the state has recorded total 12 deaths.
The media bulletin said that a total of 3,858 swabs of the 4480, sent for testing, came back negative. Authorities are now awaiting the results for 446 suspected cases.
Currently, the State has 139 active cases, with one person who is critical and on ventilator support, while total 25 have been cured, including two on Monday.
Meanwhile, Pathankot reported six more positive cases on Monday evening. While the mdia bulletin, released by the State Government, have count of two cases, the others four are yet to be added to the official list.
While two are the contacts of Pathankot’s newspaper hawker, who tested positive couple of days back, other four were from the secondary and tertiary level contacts of district’s first positive case, who died in Amritsar hospital.
“Two positive cases have been reported from pathankot including the sister and sister-in-law of newspaper hawker of Anandpur Rarra Rajkumar. Out of 17 samples from the hawker, 15 came negative but two are positive. The standard operation procedure of quarantining people and contact tracing is being done,” said a senior government official.
The other four positive cases are “from secondary and tertiary level contacts of Rajrani’s (the original positive case, now deceased) maid and head of another household, which maid used to also visit”.
Jalandhar also reported two more cases — taking the district’s total to 24. A 25-year-old resident of Lal Bazaar, who tested positive, is related to an already diagnosed patient in the city’s Mitha Bazar. The infection source of another case, 40-year-old resident of Raja Garden, is unknown.
Out of the total, about 17 coronavirus cases in Jalandhar have no contact history.
Meanwhile, a person working at Lovely Professional University in Kapurthala’s Phagwara was brought dead to the civil hospital. Only a day ago, a student from the institution was tested positive.
The health authorities have sent the samples from the patient for testing.
LUDHIANA ACP NORTH, ON DUTY AT SABZI MANDI, TESTED POSITIVE
Ludhiana’s Assistant Commissioner of Police (North) Anil Kumar Kohli has tested positive for coronavirus and is currently on ventilator. The worrying factor is that the cop was on duty at Ludhiana’s sabzi mandi, where people come in large numbers, in the last week of March.
Kohli began to show symptoms of fever and cough in the beginning of April, and was admitted to SPS Hospital on April 8.
His first swabs sent for testing about four days ago were tested negative, but samples sent on Sunday came back positive, said the authorities.
With the new case, Ludhiana now has 11 positive cases.
The officer’s test report has sent alarm bells ringing. The district health authorities are now struggling to identify and isolate the people with whom the cop would have came in contact over the past few days. Besides, the authorities are also taking samples of the people, who visited him in the hospital in the past few days.
“Thirteen close contact of the ACP, including his staff and security, have been quarantined and his wife and son have been sent into isolation and samples have been collected. We are further exploring the contacts of the ACP to know the source of contract. It is too early to say that he got infected from sabzi mandi. We are tracing all the possible contacts and trying to find the source,” said Ludhiana Civil Surgeon Dr Rajesh Bagga.
“The 52-year old Gazetted Officer of Punjab Police, posted in Ludhiana, tests positive. He had been unwell for the past week and has been put on ventilator. SOP is being followed,” said the special chief secretary KBS Sidhu.