Chandigarh, Jun 13 (IANS): Seventeen Punjab Police personnel had tested Covid-19 positive in a random sampling of 7,165 cops doing frontline jobs as part of a special coronavirus testing drive, Director General of Police (DGP) Dinkar Gupta said, here on Saturday.

It translated to around 0.9 per cent positive cases of total samples for the police force against the average of two per cent positive cases for the state, said Gupta.

Sangrur district had reported the maximum number of positive cases, he added.

While 1,868 of the 7,165 samples collected till June 12 had tested negative, results for 5,280 were pending, said Gupta.

The sampling process started on June 1 and efforts were made to test maximum number of police personnel posted in high-risk areas, depending upon the spare sampling and the testing capacity available with the health department.

He said all the 17 infected cops were in isolation, either in civil hospitals or in the Covid Care Centres.