Chandigarh, Jun 18 (IANS): To curb the spread of coronavirus in urban slums of five districts, where maximum cases have been reported, the Punjab government has chalked out a city preparedness plan.

Health Minister Balbir Sidhu said, here on Thursday, 54 per cent of Covid-19 cases were reported from Amritsar, Ludhiana Jalandhar, SAS Nagar and Patiala districts.

To control the spread, a sub-panel of the district disaster management committee has now included the community medicine faculty from a medical college, WHO and a prominent NGO.

He said the dedicated panel would assist the city administration in preparing epidemic preparedness plans, their implementation, monitoring and reporting in consultation with the Health Department.

"After getting inputs from these panels, a state-level committee would take the decision regarding sample collection, testing and reporting to reduce turnaround time to less than 24 hours from the collection of sample to reporting of results," he said.

The Minister said a house-to-house surveillance campaign and testing process would be reviewed every day, especially in containment and micro containment zones.

Sidhu said over 215,000 samples had been collected.

Additional flu corners have been set up in all health institutions, including health wellness centres, where all details of symptomatic persons have been forwarded for further action.