Rs 550-cr virology centre to come up in Mohali

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, January 4

To conduct research on viral diseases such as Covid and swine flu, the Punjab Government is all set to establish a state-of-art advanced virology centre in Mohali.

Minister for Medical Education and Research Om Prakash Soni said the centre would come up at a cost of Rs 550 crore, in which virology education, research and testing facilities would be provided. “This project is being funded by the ICMR,” he said.

He said the centre would be a boon for early diagnose of viral diseases. “In the wake of Covid outbreak in March, there was no facility to test samples of suspected corona patients as earlier such samples used to be sent to Pune for testing,” Soni said.

Besides virology centre, he said soon a burn unit would be started at Rajindra Hospital Patiala and a trauma centre would also be set up.

He said the state-of-art cancer centre was being set up in Amritsar at a cost of Rs 120 crore, which would be ready by 2021. “The centre will have a capacity of 150 beds. Similarly a separate department of virology would be started at Government Medical College, Amritsar,” he added.

He said three new medical colleges would soon be started in the state at an initial cost of Rs 1,000 crore. “The medical college in Mohali will start this year. Two upcoming medical colleges in Hoshiarpur and Kapurthala have been sanctioned and will be started in 2022,” Soni said.

He said the government had procured equipment worth crores of rupees from abroad to test Covid samples at state government hospitals. Soni said 21,000 tests per day were being conducted in three labs of government medical colleges of the state, besides 5,500 tests were being conducted daily in four new labs (two in Mohali, one each in Ludhiana and Jalandhar), taking total tally of RT-PCR tests per day to a total of 26,500.