DW BUREAU / chandigarh Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh on Thursday issued directions for increasing coronavirus testing capacity in the state to 30,000 per day, a statement said. Presently, the state's COVID-19 testing capacity is 20,000 tests per day, it said.The CM gave the directions while reviewing the coronavirus situation in the state with the top health and medical experts and officials through a video conference meeting, the government's statement said.During the meeting, Singh also directed the health department to supply ventilators free of cost to medical colleges and private hospitals. The chief minister asked the department to provide more manpower, specially anesthetists, to those hospitals which had witnessed an increase in coronavirus patients. Chief Secretary Vini Mahajan informed the meeting that tenders had been floated for the procurement of nine more RT-PCR (Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction) machines and the same were expected to be delivered by next week. She also stressed on increasing rapid antigen testing. Mahajan said most hospitals in the state have anaesthetists in the vulnerable age group of 55-60 years and the Indian Medical Association representatives had met the state health minister to discuss the issue. She said to maintain continuity of COVID treatment and care in private hospitals the anaesthetists would need to be replaced with younger ones. The chief minister thanked the eight Punjab Civil Services officers who have recently recovered from the coronavirus infection and donated their plasma to save lives.The state government's health advisory expert group head K K Talwar pointed out that the last three-four days had witnessed over 300 patients at Level 3, with 48 on ventilators, up from just 27 about 10 days ago. Though deaths per million in Punjab at 30.8 was lower than India's 39.9, the situation was grim as 920 people had lost their lives due to COVID-19 and the state's recovery rate at 62.9 per cent was lower than the nation's 73.9 per cent, he said.The percentage of co-morbid patients was higher in Punjab as compared with Haryana, explaining the greater number of deaths here, Talwar added. With the four districts of Amritsar, Jalandhar, Patiala and Ludhiana accounting for majority of the 36,000 plus cases in the state, contact tracing in these regions needs to be stepped up, he said. Secretary Health Hussain Lal said while the number of tests had gone up to nearly 20,000, the positivity rate had come down slightly to 8.05 per cent from August 11 to August 18, as against 9.31 per cent from August 3 to August 10. (editor@dailyworld.in)