Chief Minister, Captain Amarinder Singh led Punjab Government is all set to transform the state into a leading state in medical education, according to the official press release by the Information and Public Relations Department of Punjab.
During the media interaction, Punjab Cabinet Minister Om Prakash Soni said, "At the time when the lockdown /curfew was imposed in the state in March 2020, in the wake of the virus outbreak, there was no facility to test samples of suspected COVID-19 patients as earlier such samples used to be sent to Pune directly for testing."
The minister further said that on the directions of the Punjab Chief Minister, Captain Amarinder Singh, the state government had set up a mechsm in the government hospitals and procured equipment worth crores of rupees from abroad to test COVID-19 samples.
Soni further said that as many as 21,000 tests per day were being conducted in 3 labs of Government Medical Colleges of the state. Besides, 5500 tests were being conducted daily in 4 new labs (2 Mohali, 1 Ludhiana and 1 Jalandhar) taking the total tally of RT-PCR tests per day to a total of 26,500.
Soni said that it was a matter of pride for all of us that currently the lab of Government Medical College, Patiala has the capacity to perform 10,000 tests per day which is highest in the country.
The minister said that, during the pandemic, Captain government had set up 3 new plasma banks in the government medical colleges.
Soni stated that a separate cadre of posts to be created in the year 2021 to make the Department of Medical Education and Research more agile, accurate and up-to-date.
Three new medical colleges were being started in Punjab at a cost of about Rs.1000 crore adding the minister said that medical college Mohali to be started in 2021.
"The Medical Colleges of Hoshiarpur and Kapurthala has been sanctioned by the Government and they would be started in 2022", the minister said.
( With inputs from ANI )
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