40 Punjab Police personnel offer to donate plasma

Chandigarh, July 28 (IANS) Responding to Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh’s appeal, 40 Punjab Police personnel who recently recovered from Covid-19 have offered to donate their blood plasma to save the lives of others infected with the deadly virus, officials said on Tuesday.

A majority of them are from Jalandhar (Rural), with Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Navjot Singh Mahal himself leading the way after recovering from the infection, said Director General of Police (DGP) Dinkar Gupta, who has personally reached out to his convalescent officers and men to donate plasma after their mandatory two-week recovery period ends.

Gupta said within 24 hours of the SSP Jalandhar Rural coming forward to commit to plasma donation, 40 other police personnel had also volunteered, followed by more.

The blood plasma of two cops — Ram Lal and Lakhwinder Singh – has already been taken.

All the 33 personnel recovered from Covid-19 in Jalandhar Rural had committed to plasma donation, said the DGP, adding that an increasing number of plasma donors were also coming in from the police department in other districts too.

In Batala too, both the cops who have recovered have volunteered to donate plasma while in Gurdaspur, of the two personnel infected, one has recovered and has offered to give his plasma.

Kapurthala has seen 10 of the 14 infected cops recovered and three of them are listed as volunteers while the remaining seven had to be excluded as they were found to have co-morbid conditions.

Jalandhar (Rural) currently has seven active cases and Batala has four.

A special link has been created by Punjab Police for volunteers to donate plasma to help out other patients who were struggling with the disease, said Gupta.

He said a special campaign had been launched to create awareness among the cured police personnel to come out for this noble cause.

With most of the volunteers asymptomatic, their inherent immunity was higher, according to experts.

The DGP said with many other cops still under treatment for Covid-19, he expected to see more donors coming forward over the next few days.

As of Tuesday, 831 Punjab Police personnel had tested Covid positive, of whom 336 had recovered.

Of these 303 had recovered till about two weeks ago, indicating that the number of plasma donors could go up significantly in the next few days.

Currently, the department has 495 active cases and as more and more cops get cured, the number of volunteers was expected to see a sharp rise, added Gupta.

–IANS

vg/kr