Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh on Monday hoped that in view of the current Covid-19 situation across the state, there would be no further lockdown in the state.

Asked to comment whether Punjab has entered the community transmission as the cases in the country has crossed the mark of five lakh cases with just 19,000 cases reported yesterday only, the CM further said the Covid situation in the state was more or less under control as compared to the states like Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Delhi.

He hoped people’s pro-active participation to tackle the Corona crisis would surely keep this unfortunate stage at bay.

While interacting with reporters, Amarinder said till 28 June, there were 5216 confirmed corona cases in the state, of which 133 deaths had been reported.

He said as many as 23 patients were in the High Dependency Unit (HDU) and seven critically ill-patients on ventilators. He also informed that the Covid testing capacity would be enhanced to 20,000 per day by July end with four new testing labs, which was at present around 10,000 per day.

Amarinder said that the state had adequate essential equipment to manage any further spread of the pandemic, which it had been largely able to control so far and he didn’t wish the stocks to be pulled out of storage for use as his entire focus was on saving lives.

Appreciating the indomitable spirit of Punjabis, Amarinder called upon them to keep restraint in this hour of crisis amid coronavirus in the larger public interests.

He also advised the people not to be callous and misconstrue the symptoms of Coronavirus with common flu, cold, cough, body ache and fever due to change of season rather they should immediately seek advice from the doctor to have timely treatment.

Referring to another question, the CM said that in the first stage, 4248 beds in government hospitals had been set aside, with another 2014 now being added, while the private hospitals had allocated 950 beds for Covid patients.

Of the 554 ventilators available, Amarinder said in addition to the equipment already handed over to hospitals and other frontline workers, the Health Department had stocks of 5.18 lakh N95 masks, 75.47 lakh triple layer masks, 2.52 lakh PPE kits and 2223 oxygen cylinders.