Punjab’s population 2.2% of India’s, but its coronavirus share under 1%

CHANDIGARH: Punjab is home to about 2.25% of the country's population, but its share in total number of cases stands at 0.98%.
From March 1, when the first case was reported, to June 20, the state has been recording 34.36 cases every day on an average.

The state, which appeared to be on the road to recovery till the end of May, has been hit by a massive wave of cases since commencement of Unlock 1.0 from June 1. In 20 days, 1,689 cases have been reported, accounting for 42.73% of total cases. The surge has taken a toll on the recovery rate, which has dropped from 88%, highest in the country among bigger states, on May 31 to 68%. In contrast, the fatality rate increased from 2% to 2.4% during this period, with the number of deaths rising from 45 to 98.
During Unlock I.0, a majority of positive cases has come from populated districts, havinag a population density of 469 persons to 978 persons per square kilometre, as per Census 2011.Such districts include Amritsar, Ludhiana, Jalandhar and Hoshiarpur. In the last week alone, of the 889 cases which surfaced, 213 were from Jalandhar, 163 from Ludhiana and 153 from Amritsar. Of 34 deaths in the last week, 14 were in Amritsar, and four each in Ludhiana and Jalandhar.
The rise in fresh cases has shortened Punjab's doubling rate, the number of days it takes for cases to double. After rising to 102 days on May 24, the rate has narrowed down to 21.3 days.
After initially struggling with testing, Punjab has increased its testing per million from 70 tests per million population per day on April 1 to 7,074 per day, which is better than the national average of 4,771 tests per million per day. Punjab rapidly ramped up testing by increasing laboratory capacities, which went up from 80 on March 15 to 6,810 tests on June 20. The state had tested 20,000 samples by May 2, the number of which touched 2,27,012 by June 20. To increase testing capacity, the state government has sent a proposal to the central government to set up four laboratories in district hospitals, besides starting testing at four state government labs.
The Punjab government has been improving infrastructure to cater to projected rise in number of cases. At present, the government is equipped with 5,000 isolation beds, 1,916 ICU beds and 197 ventilators in government and private health facilities.