Punjab orders mandatory full Covid vaccination or negative RTPCR report for all those entering state from Aug 16

Punjab government on Saturday ordered mandatory full Covid vaccination or negative RT-PCR report for all those entering the State from August 16, with strict monitoring particularly of those coming from Himachal Pradesh and Jammu, which are showing increased positivity rate.

The directives came at a Covid review meeting chaired by the Chief Minister, who expressed concern about the positivity rate in Himachal Pradesh and other parts of the country, which has caused positivity rate in Punjab to also increase marginally to 0.2% in the last week, with RO going up to 1.05%. The Cambridge study has also predicted that cases are likely to double in the next 64 days, he warned, announcing new restrictions in addition to those already in force.

The rule on full vaccination or negative RTPCR report will apply to all those entering Punjab by road, rail or air, announced the Chief Minister, adding that if a person is found to not have either of these, RAT testing shall be mandatory, unless he/she has recently recovered from Covid.

Amid reports of Covid cases in schools, Chief Minister Amarinder Singh has directed that only fully vaccinated teaching and non-teaching staff, or those recently recovered from Covid, should physically teach in schools and colleges, with online learning option to remain available to all children.

He also ordered prioritisation of teachers and non-teaching staff for vaccination, with special camps to be held to ensure that all are covered with the first dose within this month and those due for the second dose to be also prioritised.

The Chief Minister has ordered at least 10,000 test samples of students and staff from schools to be undertaken every day. Districts-cities where positivity is above 0.2 % have been asked to shut down physical education for Classes 4 and below, until the situation improves.

On schools, which have recently reopened for certain classes in the state, the Chief Minister said that while there were some reports of high positivity in schools, the fact was that intensive testing had shown that the positivity amongst school students is 0.1 % against overall positivity of 0.2 % in the past one week. Since August 9, 41 students and 1 staff member in government schools have tested positive.

Even as he expressed satisfaction over the commencement of operations at the Whole Genome Sequencing Lab at GMCH Patiala in association with PATH, with none of the 8 samples tested there so far showing only delta variant, the Chief Minister noted that the month wise whole genome sequencing sent to NCDC has shown that the Delta variant remains predominant.