On Monday, Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh announced a three-month extension for all the retiring doctors and specialists who are under 60 years due to the increasing number of COVID-19 cases and fatalities. He has also asked the state Chief Secretary Vini Mahajan to accelerate the process of enrolment of technicians and lab assistants for managing with the huge demand.

According to the Cabinet decision, these doctors were granted an extension till 30th September and now has been extended till 31st December. In a virtual review of the COVID situation with senior officials and medical and health experts, Singh highlighted that the health department was already supportive of the government medical colleges with specialist manpower and pending recruitment by the Medical Education department. Special relaxation is given by the Finance department to allow the colleges to hire more manpower.

The Chief Minister also instructed for the formation of committees under the Deputy Commissioners, regarding distributing food packets to poor families who are under home isolation and quarantine. This will encourage testing as these families mostly abstain from getting themselves tested for COVID-19 as they fear of losing their inadequate earnings.

A sequence of actions has been announced by Amarinder Singh to ease the stress of COVID-19 patients in hospitals and at home. It is decided that government hospitals will allow serious COVID-19 patients with special dietary necessities to be given home food if they request. Also, to ease the psychological stress of serious patients in isolation in the hospitals and from their family members, the government will offer few equipment in these wards to allow video calls between patients and their relatives.

Singh has also directed all government labs to initiate the cycle threshhold (CT) value of an RT-PCR test because it can give useful information to the doctors who are treating a COVID-19 patient.

To confirm regular monitoring of the COVID-19 patients in home isolation, specifically above 40 years, Amarinder Singh had asked the Health department to place a system of confirming their clinical progress to check any sudden decline. The COVID patient tracking officers are appointed in each district to guarantee such patients are receiving due care.

The instructions came in as active cases of coronavirus in the state reached at 16,156 as on 6th September with a growing fatality rate of 2.9 percent and deaths per million at 62.

Health Secretary Hussan Lal informed in the meeting that the average positivity from August 26 to September 3 was 9.42 per cent. Chief Secretary Vini Mahajan said that both coronavirus cases and fatalities had observed a steady increase in the last few days with 89 per cent deaths being reported from Level-III cases. The situation was monitored on a daily basis.

Source: ET Healthworld