Appreciating Punjab’s Covid micro-containment and house-to-house surveillance strategy, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday asked all other states to adopt the model, which was helping Punjab successfully control the spread of the pandemic to a significant extent.

In a Video Conference meeting with chief ministers of Punjab and some other states, as part of his scheduled 2-day interactions to review the Covid situation and management strategies of all the states, the PM intervened as Chief Minister Amarinder Singh was describing the state’s model to combat Covid and suggested that all states should follow the same strategic approach to effectively counter Covid.

During the meeting, Amarinder suggested to the Prime Minister to set up a Group, which should include a few chief ministers, to discuss and formulate a coordinated Centre-State response to the devastating impact of Covid on the economy and governments across the country.

During a Video Conference with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was joined by Union Home Minister Amit Shah, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan, the Punjab CM requested that the Centre should work closely with the states to ease the distress caused by the pandemic and the subsequent lockdown.

While living with Covid was the new normal since the lockdown could not continue indefinitely as the cycle of economy, once broken, takes a long time to restart, the need of the hour was to take care of both lives and livelihoods, as the Prime Minister had himself said in his VC in April, the CM said.

Amarinder recalled that when, in early April, he had said that Covid could go on till September, he had been called an alarmist by some people. But with experts now warning that the pandemic could continue even beyond September, it was important to learnt to co-exist with it and cope with it better, he stressed, underlining the need for the central and state governments to work in close coordination for this.

Calling for urgent steps to mitigate Punjab’s financial stress, the Chief Minister said a detailed memorandum had already been sent to the Government of India, listing out the impact of Covid-19 and also seeking fiscal and non-fiscal assistance.