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Taking a serious note of rising number of coronavirus positive cases across the state, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath directed that a senior IAS officer and a Health department official be deputed as nodal officers and sent to districts reporting 20 or more COVID-19 cases so that medicare to patients could be monitored and the spread of the virus to other areas be prevented.
Additional Chief Secretary (Information), Awanish Awasthi told media persons in Lucknow on Thursday that a senior IAS officer and a health official would be rushed to those districts on Friday that had reported 20 or more COVID-19 cases.
“There are 15 such districts but Gautam Buddha Nagar (Noida) already has a senior IAS officer monitoring the situation and hence officials would visit the remaining 14 districts and camp there for a week,” he said.
These officials would check facilities and medical care available to the patients and take stock of preparation of the district got countering the pandemic.
Awasthi said that in districts where there were no senior police officials of Inspector General (IG) rank, there too a senior police official would be sent along with administrative and health official. “They would review lockdown, medical and administration, sanitation, quarantine centres, community kitchens and shelter homes,” he said.
“The government’s focus is on ensuring that there is no spread of coronavirus out of hotspots and testing has also been intensified there,” he said.
Awasthi further said that the state had increased its testing capacity and on Wednesday 3,955 tests were conducted against sample collection of 3,737. “This shows that we have started clearing backlog. Besides, UP has become the third state in the number of cumulative tests being done in the country,” he said.
“Pool tests have stated in four labs in UP and on Wednesday, 812 samples were tested. Notwithstanding its huge population and limited resources, UP is ranked 7th in COVID Case Index in India,” he said.