4 district account for 63% deaths in Punjab

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, August 20

In the continuous surge in Covid cases, the state again reported 1,741 cases and 37 deaths in the past 24 hours.

With these cases, the total count has reached 37,824, while the total number of casualties has reached 957.

As far as cases are concerned, Ludhiana topped the state with 398 cases, followed by Jalandhar (242), SAS Nagar (169), Bathinda (148), Ferozepur (133), Moga (94), Patiala (81), Amritsar (75) and Barnala (58).

Apart from that, 345 patients are on oxygen support and 39 are critical and are on ventilator support at present. In terms of casualties too, Ludhiana is the worst hit with 10 deaths, followed by SAS Nagar, Patiala and Sangrur (5 each), Jalandhar (3), Amritsar, Hoshiarpur and SBS Nagar (2 each) and Gurdaspur, Kapurthala and Muktsar (1 each).

The record jump in the caseload came on a day when the state government announced extension of night curfew by two hours in all cities from August 21. Earlier on August 17, the state had reported a maximum daily increase of 1,704 cases.

Four districts — Ludhiana, Jalandhar, Patiala and Amritsar — account for 55 per cent of the total Covid-19 cases and 63 per cent of the total fatalities in the state.

As per the Health Department, a total of 334 patients were discharged after recovering from the infection. So far, 23,037 people have been cured of the infection. There are 13,830 active Coivd-19 cases in the state as of now.

With the collection of 20,290 more samples for testing, the figure of total samples taken so far for testing has reached 8,39,947 in the state.