87% of Punjab’s +ve cases in past week have Nanded link
CHANDIGARH : Around 87% of the Covid-19 cases in Punjab in the past week are linked to pilgrims who returned to the state from Nanded in Maharashtra.
Of the 680 new cases reported in the state during this period, 596, or say 87%, were Nanded returnees who tested positive for coronavirus, according to an analysis of data shared by the state health department. Overall, their total count stands at 1,205, which makes them the biggest cluster of covid positive patients in Punjab accounting for 68% out of the total 1,780 positive cases as on May 9 even as the samples of all 4,178 pilgrims, except around 200, have been tested.
The number of positive cases went up by 61 to 1,823 as per official data at 6 pm on Sunday, but the count of returnees whose samples tested positive was not available. So far, 58 have been discharged after recovery whereas one, a 56-year-old man from Manuke village in Jagraon who was asymptomatic, succumbed to the deadly virus on Saturday. These persons were mostly ferried in government buses or some of them travelled in private vehicles from the Hazur Sahib gurdwara in Nanded in the past 15 days. They were stranded there since March 25 when the national lockdown was announced by the Centre to curb the coronavirus spread.
A large number of belonged to Amritsar, Tarn Taran, Ludhiana, Gurdaspur, Jalandhar and Hoshiarpur districts where the count of coronavirus cases saw a sharp spike as their test reports started coming out. Dr Rajesh Bhaskar, health department’s official spokesperson for Covid-19 said the number of positive cases has stabilised in the past couple of days as the samples of most of them have been tested already. “Their contacts have also been traced and our contact tracing is more than 99%,” he said.
64,000 REGISTER TO RETURN TO STATE
The state stares at another serious challenge in the coming days as 56,004 Punjabis have registered on a government portal to return home in addition to another 8,111 who want to come back from abroad. “The number of those who registered online was just 20,000 a day ago, but it jumped as more people learnt about the app. This number is likely to go up further in the coming days,” an official said.
Among the migrant workers and other stranded persons who have registered to come back to Punjab from other states, the maximum 12,627 are from Uttar Pradesh, 8,836 from Bihar, 4,629 from Maharashtra, 2,402 from Gujarat, 1,454 from Uttarakhand besides others. The state government is aware of the challenge as chief minister Capt Amarinder Singh had, the other day, also warned of another spike with 32,000 stranded persons returning in the next few weeks. The state has issued a detailed advisory regarding the screening and quarantine of returnees from within the country. Also, the number of migrants and other stranded persons who registered to go back to their home states has gone up further to 14.03 lakh.