Uttar Pradesh on Sunday recorded 4,164 COVID-19 cases during the past 24 hours, the highest in almost six months, with 31 deaths in a day, prompting Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath to ask officials to emphasise on contact tracing and treatment of the patients. He said that at least 25 people coming in contact with a novel coronavirus positive person should be traced.
"Set up monitoring committees at the gram panchayat and municipality levels and activate them. Along with government officials in rural areas, Youth Mangal Dals and chowkidars should be included in the monitoring committee. Similarly, in urban areas, civil defense and voluntary organisations should be included in the monitoring committees. Public representatives' help should also be taken in the monitoring work," the chief minister said during a review meeting here on Sunday.
The chief minister said the committees should monitor the passengers arriving from other states to Uttar Pradesh.
"They should monitor other persons who have symptoms of COVID-19. This will help in detecting cases. Test 25 people related to any infected person. This will go a long way in preventing the spread of novel coronavirus," he said.
He also asked officials to increase the number of RT-CPR tests and instructed them to send samples of RT-PCR through statistical sampling.
With a spike in the novel coronavirus cases, Lucknow recorded 1,129 positive cases during the past 24 hours, followed by 453 in Varanasi, 397 in Prayagraj, 235 in Kanpur Nagar and 121 in Gorakhpur.
During the past 24 hours 31 COVID-19 patients lost their lives with a maximum of eight in Lucknow.
The chief minister said that an adequate number of beds should be arranged in Covid hospitals in view of the present surge of novel coronavirus infection.
"Availability of doctors and paramedical staff should be ensured in these hospitals. Availability of oxygen, ventilators and medicines should also be ensured as per the requirement," he said.
Yogi Adityanath said that people who were infected with coronavirus and were in home isolation should be constantly monitored and, if required, they should be immediately admitted to hospital.
"Medicines and other treatment should be made available to the COVID-19 patients kept in home isolation. Rapid response teams should be formed according to the predetermined protocol and they should visit the homes of the patients in home isolation three times a day," he said and added that immediate detection of coronavirus infected people and isolating them would go a long way in preventing the spread of the infection.
The chief minister said that masks were an important tool in the fight against the novel coronavirus so people should be asked to wear masks. He said it should also be ensured that shopkeepers also wore masks. He said auto, taxi and bus drivers should also wear masks and lift only those passengers who were wearing masks.
He also issued directive to make effective use of the public address systems to make people aware about prevention from coronavirus infection.
During the meeting, the chief minister also reviewed the progress of Covid vaccination. He directed officials to increase the speed of vaccination work. He said only vaccination could save the lives of the people and districts should meet their prescribed targets.