Chandigarh, May 19 (IANS): Punjab Health Minister Balbir Singh Sidhu on Tuesday said the state has become the leading state in the battle against coronavirus by achieving a 78 per cent recovery rate.

He said 1,57,13,789 people have been screened in April and out of them 9,593 were found to have symptoms and referred for further management and sampling.

He said there have been 1,980 confirmed cases in the state and 52,955 persons have been tested out of which 48,813 were found negative.

He said out of 1,980 COVID-19 patients, 1,557 cases were cured, the highest recovery rate in India.

Sidhu said the 'Risk Stratified Random Sampling' needs to be done on frequent travellers, frontline workers, people with co-morbidity and people living in densely populated areas, etc, and focus would be on high-risk areas and high-risk individuals to further prevent the spread of the virus.

The Health Minister said out of 4,218 Nanded returnees, 1,252 turned out to be positive for COVID-19. All of them have been declared cured and sent to their homes.

Meanwhile, doctors and paramedical staff at the Civil Hospital in Ludhiana staged a protest over the poor quality protective equipment being provided to them while on duty.

The protesters raised the provision of poor quality of PPE kits and N-95 masks.

Protester Milan Verma said the masks that were provided were stitched or stapled masks for treating Covid patients and were made of substandard material. Even the PPE kits provided to them were made of poor quality.

The protest was later called off on the assurance by Civil Surgeon Rajesh Bagga that the masks and the other equipment would be replaced.