india

Updated: Mar 07, 2020 09:30 IST

The Punjab government has clarified coronavirus has not been declared an epidemic in the state and the health department had merely issued a precautionary advisory under an act, which calls for special measures to prevent an outbreak or spread of any dangerous disease.

A spokesperson said there was absolutely no epidemic of the disease in the state and the press release issued by the health department on the issue had inadvertently described Covid-19 as an epidemic disease.

The department had issued an advisory under the Epidemic Diseases Act, 1897, only as a “temporary regulation” to combat the threat of coronavirus, said the spokesperson, adding there was no cause for panic at present and the situation was totally under control.

The spokesperson made it clear that while the advisory notification, listing the preventive and precautionary measures, was issued in line with the decisions taken by chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh to ensure that the disease does not spread in the state, the government had not taken any decision to declare the disease an epidemic.

According to the spokesperson, under the epidemic diseases act all that the government had done was to take a series of preventive initiatives, including screening of suspected cases, recording of travel history in case of travel to country/area where COVID-19 has been reported, and 14-day home quarantine of person with such history found asymptomatic.

Samples of two of the three people, who came from Italy to Hoshiarpur, have been brought for a test at the Government Medical College (GMC) in Amritsar after they tested positive in the preliminary report by the All India Institute Of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in New Delhi.

The final reports are awaited from National Institute of Virology (NIV) in Pune, where the samples had been sent, said the spokesperson.

Thirty-one people have been infected by coronavirus so far in India as the government has taken a slew of measures to contain the spread of the deadly disease.

The outbreak has killed more than 3400 people and spread across more than 90 nations, with six countries reporting their first cases on Friday.