Enthused with the state crossing 50,000 tests much before the stipulated time, the Uttar Pradesh government has asked the officials to enhance the number of COVID-19 tests by rapid antigen tests.
Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has directed massive door-to-door surveillance in urban areas on a ‘mission mode’ and use of rapid antigen tests in a big way.
On Thursday, the state set a record 54,207 tests against the target of 50,000 tests by July-end.
Additional Chief Secretary (Home) Awanish Awasthi said here on Friday that the chief minister had said that every district which had a population under 25 lakh should go for 500 rapid antigen tests per day while districts with above 25 lakh population should go for 1,000 rapid antigen tests daily.
“The chief minister has asked the authorities to immediately provide 5,000 rapid antigen test kits to smaller districts and 10,000 kits to the bigger districts,” Awasthi said while disclosing that in Lucknow there would be 1,500 rapid antigen tests daily.
He said that rapid antigen tests had given good results in western UP and it had controlled the situation to some extent.
Awasthi, who himself is monitoring the arrangements made for containing coronavirus in the state capital, said that to rationalise the containment areas, mega containment zones had been made in the state capital.
“The Lucknow district authorities, with the assistance of police, have identified several containment areas and clubbed them together for better management and for the security of the people staying there,” he said.
In Lucknow, the district authorities have announced a partial lockdown in four police station areas from Monday where there are maximum numbers of hotspots. The police station areas are Indira Nagar, Ghazipur, Ashiyana and Sarojini Nagar.
Meanwhile, Additional Chief Secretary (Health) Amit Mohan Prasad said that there were 16,445 active cases in the state while 27,634 patients had recovered, including 956 who were released from hospitals on Friday.
There are 16,454 people in the isolation wards of the Covid hospitals and 4,142 in the institutional quarantine.
Of the total tests done on Thursday, 2907 were of 5-sample pools and 432 of 10-sample pools. In the 5-sample pools, 432 were found positive and in the 10-sample pools, 66 were positive.
At present around 1.71 lakh health teams have covered 1.24 crore houses in the state to screen over 6.34 crore people in 29,873 areas in the containment areas. There are presently 4,679 hotspots in the state under 893 police station areas covering over 10 lakh houses and 61 lakh population.
Prasad said that people should wear face masks and follow social distancing as during monsoon due to rise in humidity, the spread of coronavirus would be more prominent.
He said that the door-to-door surveillance which ended on July 15, detected around 1.75 lakh with symptoms.
“We are going for COVID-19 tests for all these people and already 40,000 have been tested and the rest would be tested in the next 2-3 days,” he said.
Prasad said these surveillance teams had pasted stickers and marked every house and noted down the people with comorbidity like diabetes, blood pressure, kidney, cancer, liver, heart and other ailments. He said these details would be digitised and would be used for non-communicable diseases campaigns.