To save the lives of those infected with the deadly coronavirus, 40 Punjab Police personnel, who have recently recovered from Covid-19, offered to donate their blood plasma.

The majority of them are from Jalandhar(rural), with senior superintendent of police (SSP) Navjot Singh Mahal also volunteering to donate blood plasma. Director General of Police (DGP) Dinkar Gupta, who has personally reached out to his officers to donate plasma after their mandatory two week recovery period ends, said within 24 hours of the SSP Jalandhar (rural) coming forward to commit to plasma donation, 40 other police personnel had also volunteered, followed by more.

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The blood plasma of two cops-Ram Lal and Lakhwinder Singh-have already been taken. A special link has been created by the Punjab Police for volunteers to donate plasma to help out other patients who were struggling with the disease, according to the DGP. All the 33 officers recovered from Covid in Jalandhar (rural) had committed to plasma donation, said the DGP, adding that an increasing number of plasma donors were also coming in from the police department in other districts too.

In Batala too, both the cops who have recovered volunteered to donate plasma, while in Gurdaspur, of the two personnel infected, one has recovered and has offered to donate plasma.

Kapurthala has seen 10 of the 14 infected cops recover and three of them are listed as volunteers while the remaining seven had to be excluded as they were found to have co-morbidity. Gupta said a special campaign had been launched to create awareness among the cured personnel to come out for this noble cause.

The DGP said with many cops still under treatment, he expected to see more donors coming forward over the next few days. As of 28 July, 831 PP personnel had tested Covid positive, of whom 336 had recovered.

Of these 303 had recovered till about two weeks ago, indicating that the number of plasma donors could go up significantly in the next few days. Currently, the department has 495 active cases and as more and more cops get cured, the number of volunteers were expected to see a sharp rise, said Gupta.

The state government has set up one Plasma Bank in Patiala and is preparing to operationalise two more to strengthen its Covid treatment and care network.