Punjab on Sunday recorded 12 new cases taking the state tally to 170. The seven of the 12 fresh cases were reported from Jalandhar, followed by three from SAS Nagar, and one each from Faridkot and Kapurthala.
Three more people were tested positive for coronavirus in Dera Bassi’s Jawaharpur village, adding up Mohali district’s total to 53, out of which, 37 have been reported from this village alone.
Two women, aged 55 and 80, whose family had already tested positive were diagnosed with the infection on Sunday. They have been admitted in the isolation ward at Gian Sagar Hospital in Banur.
Mohali Civil Surgeon Dr Manjit Singh Civil said that health teams were now taking swabs of all those people they were in touch with, including other family members.
None of the patients have any travel history. Most of them were asymptomatic, and were diagnosed with the infection only after testing.
Reports said that some members of Tablighi Jamaat — a sect that held a religious congregation last month and that has since led authorities to diagnose hundreds of coronavirus cases among its members — had stayed in the village, but have now left.
Mohali Deputy Commissioner Girish Dayalan said that the District Administration was undertaking extensive contact tracing and sampling.
Authorities are treating the village as a coronavirus cluster — the District Administration has already sealed Jawaharpur, along with other villages such as Devigarh and Mehmudpur villages, as part of its cluster containment strategy. Punjab police have sent 75 cops with three PCR vehicles to the area.
Jalandhar on Sunday recorded seven new coronavirus cases, taking the district's tally to 22 — having the most number of cases after Mohali.
Five of the seven new cases are contacts of already diagnosed positive cases, while one has been linked to last month’s Tablighi Jamaat congregation in Delhi's Nizamuddin.
A woman from Kotla Keran village, who died recently, was tested positive for coronavirus on Sunday. While the state is yet to add her in the official records, it would be the state’s 13th casualty from the deadly virus.
Meanwhile, the health teams rushed to the area for contact tracing. It has been learnt that several people attended the woman’s funeral.
In Kapurthala's Phagwara, a student of Lovely Professional University (LPU) who was staying at the institution’s hostel tested positive late on Saturday. The woman, believed to be originally from Mumbai’s suburbs, is believed to have travelled nowhere recently and had been staying at the hostel for several months now.
District health authorities have sealed the campus, and conducting contact tracing.
THREE RECOVERED
Nawanshahr district health authorities said that reports of three people, who had previously been isolated at the district hospital after they tested positive, have come negative for the second consecutive time. Authorities have declared that they had been treated successfully and will be discharged soon.
The number of people cured in the district now stands at 13, said the officials adding that the district now had only five more people in its isolation centre.
Son of the state’s first COVID-19 victim Baldev Singh, Harinder Singh and Sukhwinder Singh were discharged from the hospital. While Harinder was tested positive on March 21, Sukhiwnder was tested positive a day before. Baldev Singh died on Mach 18 of cardiac arrest, but his report came the next day.