COVID-19: Punjab govt provides 809 ventilators to districts

Amid a second surge of COVID-19 pandemic, the Punjab Government has provided 809 more ventilators to the districts in the state.

After chairing a high-level meeting to review the current COVID situation and vaccination status in the state here on Sunday, Chief Secretary Vini Mahajan directed all the Deputy Commissioners to install the new ventilators today itself and ensure that not even a single oxygen concentrator and ventilator remain unutilised. She also ordered to impose work from home for private offices so that the chain of COVID transmission could be arrested, according to an official statement.

Addressing the Administrative Secretaries, Deputy Commissioners (DCs), Commissioners of Police, Senior Superintendents of Police and Civil Surgeons through video conferencing, the Chief Secretary directed all the departments concerned to put in their best efforts to break the chain of virus transmission, besides increasing the number of Level-2 and Level-3 beds to provide the best possible care to serious Covid patients as 14 of the total 22 districts have been showing more than 10 per cent positivity rate.

Urging the private hospitals to participate in the fight against the pandemic more actively, the Chief Secretary ordered the DCs to extend every possible support to increase bed capacity in the private hospitals. "Strict enforcement of restrictions should be ensured in true spirit to save the precious lives from deadly virus," she emphasised.

Sharing that the Punjab Government was coordinating with the Union Government to get additional medical oxygen supplies from Bokaro and other parts of the country besides the state enhancing its own production, Mahajan asked the departments of Industries and Medical Education and Research to further ramp up the production of life-saving gas besides ensuring seamless and hassle-free medical oxygen supplies to the state's medical colleges and hospitals. "No holding back of empty oxygen cylinders should be allowed at any cost," she asserted.

The Chief Secretary said all the health and frontline workers should be inoculated irrespective of their age. She categorically said the oxygen, Remedisivier and Tocilizumab should not be prescribed to patients directly and these should be administered within the hospital settings and it should be the duty of the hospital to ensure availability of these essential items and must not ask the patients or their attendants to arrange the same from outside at their level.

( With inputs from ANI )