Fighting a war with an unknown enemy: Punjab CM
April 07, 2020 17:38
Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh says dealing with COVID-19 is like "fighting a war" wherein an "unknown enemy" is making the battle more complicated and challenging every day.
Underlining the state's resolve to tide over the crisis, he says his government is leaving no stone unturned in procuring adequate life-saving equipment, including ventilators, PPE kits, N-95 masks and expanding bed capacity of isolation wards.
The northern state has reported 79 coronavirus cases and seven deaths till Tuesday morning.
In an e-mail interview to PTI, Singh says the large number of non-resident Indian population in the state makes it more vulnerable to the deadly disease.
" another problem we are facing here in Punjab is the large number of NRIs and foreign returnees who have come to the state in the past one month or so. Tracking, tracing and following up on them is a massive task," he says.
He says the Punjab government has already announced that the passports of NRIs would be impounded if they failed to reveal their travel history.
"Most of the 95,000 passengers who arrived through Mohali and Amritsar airports before suspension of flights and the Attari-Wagah and Dera Baba Nanak land ports have been traced," he says.
"Subsequently, the Centre sent us a list of 55,000 people who arrived in Delhi and were quarantined. Contact tracing has also been completed in most cases, but there may be cases where people are hiding information, including their travel and contact history," Singh says.
The senior Congress leader says his government is procuring protective equipment for frontline workers, including doctors and other health staff, on a war footing.
"We are procuring equipment from wherever we can, but there is a shortage everywhere. We are getting indigenously made stuff speed-tested and produced. But it is not an easy job," he says.
On the state's preparedness on the healthcare front, Singh says the state will scale up the capacity of isolation beds to 20,000 in the next few days from the already operational 2,500 beds.
"We have already ordered 1.65 lakh PPE kits, of which nearly half have been received. Orders have also been placed for one lakh N-95 masks and 42 lakh triple layer masks, and more than half of them have been received," he says, adding private industry is also contributing by way of making PPE kits and N-95 masks.
The government hospitals in the state currently have nearly 500 ventilators, he adds.
Singh, however, laments that the state does not have enough COVID-19 testing kits.
"And of course, there is the question of testing of people for the disease. We are told to test, test and test. But we do not have enough kits, though we are now using mobile vans for community testing in hot-spot areas. The central government has allowed rapid testing, but we need kits for that too," he says.
Adding to the woes is the economic impact of the disease, with Punjab anticipating a hit of Rs 5,000 crore in revenue by April-end.
"As of now, things have not gone out of control in India, but the numbers are increasing every day. We have seen a spike (of cases) here in Punjab in the past few days," he says.
The chief minister says the COVID-19 crisis has hit the economy of the state with no revenue generation from VAT and other sources. Punjab was the first state in the country to clamp curfew last month. -- PTI
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