With rural areas of Punjab now showing a spike in COVID-19 cases, Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh on Friday urged villagers to restrict movement into their areas to only those free of the virus.
In a live Facebook telecast, Capt. Singh called for strict measures in rural areas over the next two months, which, he described as extremely crucial. “Now the rural areas are seeing a surge in cases, so we need to be very careful,” he said, urging villagers to keep outsiders away.
Exhorting people to “save your mohallas and villages to save yourself, your families and Punjab,” the Chief Minister asked them not to delay going to hospitals in time. “We have teams of doctors everywhere, approach them if you feel unwell,” he urged them, stressing that delay in going for treatment was leading to people ending up in L3 level. While occupancy of L2 beds is 50%, at the L3 level, around 90% of the beds are currently occupied, and the State government was in the process of adding another 2,000.
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He said Punjab so far had 4.75 lakh plus cases, with Thursday’s 24-hour case load at 8,484. While the total deaths stood at 11,297, the State had lost 184 lives to COVID-19 on Thursday. There are 9,619 patients on oxygen support and 429 on ventilator support.