Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has asked officials to exercise special caution in the districts of Kanpur Nagar, Deoria, Kushinagar, Ballia and Varanasi as the number of COVID-19 cases in these districts had gone up in the recent past.
He directed Health Minister Jai Pratap Singh to maintain dialogue with chief medical officers of these districts. He also asked Medical Education Minister Suresh Khanna to remain in touch with all medical colleges and institutes of those regions..
“The officials should monitor the COVID-19 spike in these districts. The government has made pulse oximeters available at village and ward levels and these should be used to check the Covid cases in rural areas,” Yogi Adityanath said.
Presiding over a high-level Unlock review meeting at his official residence here on Saturday, the chief minister directed officials to maintain social distancing in ongoing works on expressways, dams and embankments in view of the floods. He also asked them to ensure that there was no water-logging anywhere during the monsoon.
The chief minister directed officials to widely publicise the preventive measures taken by the government to check COVID-19. “The people should be made aware that they should make masks part of their life and wash hands with soaps regularly,” he said.
Yogi directed officials to ramp up Covid testing to 50,000 per day. He asked the officials to closely monitor the drive against protection from COVID-19 and other communicable diseases in the districts of Gorakhpur division. He said the asymptomatic patients should be admitted to Level-1 Covid hospitals.
The chief minister asked the officials of the Agriculture and Horticulture departments to spray chemicals for effective control of locust attacks. He was apprised that fogging had been done in as many as 77,000 revenue villages and 9,000 urban wards. He was also informed that the gram pradhans were contacted and directed to conduct a special cleanliness drive.
The chief minister was also informed that during the two-day campaign, a total of 915 fire brigade vehicles were doing sanitation work in the entire state. In this task, 55 chief fire officers, 53 MSOs (inspector rank), 84 FSSO (SI rank) and 4500 firemen, leading firemen had been deployed.
Later, Additional Chief Secretary Awanish Awasthi said that during sanitation campaign, work had been done on a war-footing in 561 hotspots, 698 sensitive sites, 1,793 market places, about 2,000 residential sites and 2,006 other places in 70 districts. He said that instructions had been given not to spray sodium hypochlorite solution on humans, animals or inside the house (because of power connection).
Awasthi said that financial activities were going on smoothly in the state. He said transactions worth Rs 45,186 crore had been made in 3.31 crore transactions between July 1 and July 10. Under this, transactions of Rs 2,827 crore through 1.05 crore transactions was made through banking correspondents, while Rs 36,564 crore had been transacted through 1.10 crore transactions via bank branches. Apart from this, transactions of Rs 5794 crore had been done through 1.15 crore transactions via ATMs. He said that it was clear that the state’s economic condition had improved.
Elaborating on the challans issued in the last two days, he said that 2,34,173 people had been named by registering 93,757 FIRs under Section 188. He said so far 62,435 vehicles had been seized during intensive checking of 91,26,007 vehicles in the state and a mitigation fee of Rs 43,70,18,047 was recovered during the checking operation. He said In all, 355 people had been arrested by registering 744 FIRs against 992 people for indulging in black marketing and hoarding.
Awasthi said that action had been taken against fake news by taking cognisance in 1,786 cases so far. On July 12, a total of 14 cases, 12 of Twitter, two on Facebook, have been taken into cognisance and forwarded to the cyber cell for necessary action.
“The number of coronavirus positive people in the hotspot areas is 11,809. The number of institutional quarantined people is 10,822. Uttar Pradesh is among the leading states in the country in distribution of foodgrains on ration cards,” he said.