Punjab to conduct 20,000 Covid-19 tests daily, says minister Soni

JALANDHAR/LUDHIANA: To counter the surge in Covid-19 cases, the Punjab government has upgraded facilities to 20,000 tests a day, OP Soni, the state’s medical education and research minister, said on Monday.

He was inaugurating two testing centres at the Punjab Biotechnology Incubator (PBI) Agri and Food testing Laboratory in Phase-5 and the Punjab Forensic Science Laboratory (PFSL) in Phase-4 of Mohali with Balbir Sidhu, state health minister.

Each lab, expected to test 1,000 samples a day, had been set up with approvals from the Indian Council of Medical Research. PBI had been given 25 and PFSL33 samples, respectively, for testing on Monday.

Of the four laboratories starting operations from today, the other two are the Regional Disease Diagnostic Laboratory, Jalandhar, and the Guru Angad Dev Veterinary and Animal Sciences University (GADVASU), Ludhiana.

In his address, minister Sidhu stated that the surge in Covid-19 cases showed that large scale testing was being done and infected people were being isolated from others, thus preventing further transmission.