Gangtok, May 29: In a bid to instill confidence among the health workers and the patients, Sikkim Chief Minister, Prem Singh Tamang on Saturday stood alongside them donning the PPE suit during one of his visits to take stock of the situation.

The CM briefly interacted with the medical team, patients and other staff of the Namchi Girls Senior Secondary School in South Sikkim that has been converted into a COVID Care Centre (CCC) and wished the patients a speedy recovery. He also assured them that the government will assist in every possible way for the recovery of COVID-19 patients in the state.

The centre had 16 patients (as on Friday).

He also visited several other COVID centres in the state on Saturday. He began the day by meeting patients at the Paljor Stadium CCC in Gangtok that currently has 13 patients before reaching South Sikkim. He gave away medicines and eatables to the patients there.

Later, he met the 64 COVID-19 positive monks staying at the Saramsa Garden COVID-19 care center. They were from the Ganjong Monastery in the outskirts of Gangtok that had caught the infection following which, it has been converted into a containment zone.

So far, as many as 311 monks have tested positive in five monasteries in the past one week. The trend started from Ganjong Monastery.

Around 10 am, Sikkim CM Tamang reached his home constituency in Poklok-Kamrang in Namchi, where the district hospital in South Sikkim is located. South Sikkim recorded 136 new COVID-19 cases on Friday.

The visit by the Sikkim CM to various COVID-19 care centers seems to be timely, as the state recorded its highest corona virus spike on Friday with 420 new cases.

In the first wave of COVID-19 last year when Assam’s current CM Himanta Biswa Sarma was then the Health Minister, he too had donned the PPE suit in several instances to interact with the patients.