Panic has set in after Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, former Chief Minister and Samajwadi Party President Akhilesh Yadav and a couple of ministers and top bureaucrats tested positive for novel coronavirus infection as Uttar Pradesh recorded 20,510 cases in the last 24 hours.
Officials claim that 68 people died of COVID-19 in the last one day.
Additional Chief Secretary (Health) Amit Mohan Prasad said here on Wednesday that 20,510 new cases of novel coronavirus infection were reported in the state during the past 24 hours. However, he said, 4,517 COVID-19 patients had recovered and at present 1,11,835 active cases were undergoing treatment.
So far 9,376 people had died of COVID-19 in the state, including 68 who succumbed to the deadly virus in the last 24 hours, he said.
The pace of infection in the state is increasing at an exponential rate. There were only 1,700 active cases in the first week of March. But after the surge which began from the second week of March, in one month the number of active coronavirus cases reached 95,980 on April 14.
About 68,000 new positive cases have been confirmed in just one week.
UP is just behind Maharashtra in number of COVID-19 patients. While Maharashtra has the maximum number 5.64 lakh active cases, UP now has 1,11,835 active cases. Karnataka is at number three and Kerala at number four. Earlier, Maharashtra was followed by Kerala, Punjab, Delhi and Rajasthan.
There was a panic in the air after the chief minister tested positive.
"When will the government announce a lockdown? Is it waiting for Lucknow to perish before it goes for strict measures," a section officer in the Labour Department told this reporter on Wednesday.
Despite April 14 being a national holiday, some government departments were open and officers could be seen talking about the chief minister testing positive.
"If the chief minister can test positive for coronavirus infection, what about us. We have no protection at all," a lower rung officer quipped as he adjusted his double masks.
The surge in COVID-19 infection has made people jittery and the paucity of medicines has made them nervous. The government probably realised this, therefore a consignment of 25,000 doses of Remdesivir injection arrived in Uttar Pradesh on Wednesday.
A government spokesman said that Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath had sent a government aircraft to Ahmedabad to bring the life-saving injection.
Remdesivir is considered the only potent medicine for those patients who have been hospitalised and their lungs have been compromised because of coronavirus infection. Drug Controller Dr AK Jain said that seven Indian companies were producing Remdesivir injections and they had assured to provide more injections as per the need of the state at the earliest.
"At present, there is a sufficient stock of Remdesivir injections and it is being given to serious patients," he said.
Earlier, on June 9 last year, the chief minister had sent a government aircraft to Goa to bring TrueNat machines while on April 7 a state airplane was sent to Bengaluru to bring medical equipment.
Meanwhile, Prasad said that 2,10,121 samples were tested in the last 24 hours, 90,000 of them through RT-PCR.
Lucknow continues to be the hotspot where 5,433 fresh cases were reported on Wednesday along with 14 deaths. There are 31,687 positive cases in the state capital. Prayagraj reported 1,702 fresh cases and 10 deaths while Varanasi reported 1,585 fresh cases and in Kanpur Nagar 1,221.
Meanwhile, so far 83,49,009 people have been given the first dose of Covid vaccine in the state. Besides, 13,93,075 people have been administered the second dose of the vaccine.