LAHORE: The Central Contact Tracing Unit (CCTU) of the Primary and Secondary Healthcare Department (P&SHD) has traced 0.2 million contacts of coronavirus patients in order to identify new cases in different regions of Punjab.

This was revealed in the video link meeting of CEOs of all districts to review the progress of contact tracing of confirmed cases.

The meeting was chaired by P&SHD Secretary retired Capt Muhammad Usman on Wednesday.

The meeting was briefed that the health department teams traced 50,000 contacts from June 15 to 30.

Similarly, they managed to trace total 19,370 positive cases in June, the meeting was told.

The secretary P&SHD said that CCTU was set up exclusively for contact tracing and it was yielding positive results.

Mr Usman directed that contact tracing of all positive cases must be completed within 24 hours.

Meanwhile, the Covid-19 claimed lives of 35 more patients in Punjab during the last 24 hours, taking the total death toll to 1,762 so far.

Similarly, 761 more patients tested positive for the virus across the province during the same period.

Of them, 403 were reported in Lahore, 87 in Rawalpindi, 64 in Faisalabad and 42 in Multan, according to the official figures released by the government on Wednesday.

The total number of confirmed cases has reached 76,262 in Punjab so far.

Published in Dawn, July 2nd, 2020