Aiming to control the spread of new and more fatal novel coronavirus variant Omicron, the Uttar Pradesh government kick-started a special focused six-day testing drive on Wednesday. The state government agencies will conduct this special drive from December 1 to 6.
Additional Chief Secretary (Health) Amit Mohan Prasad said, “The six-day drive is divided in a way to cover the entire state in order to remove any risk of further transmission of the new variant of coronavirus. For the first three days, the drive will be conducted in engineering colleges, colleges and schools, while on the remaining three days it will be carried out in hospitals and medical colleges.”
The senior official further said, “UP has been maintaining control over the Covid situation fairly well and in view of rising cases in other states, we must intensify our testing operation. The objective of this 6-day special focused testing drive is to enable early detection, if any, followed by early treatment.”
Prasad said that while there was no situation at present warranting panic or worry, the government had put over 73,000 ‘surveillance committees’ on alert mode to ensure thorough screening and timely identification, isolation and treatment of people showing mild symptoms to remove any chance of increased transmission of the virus or any water-borne, vector-borne diseases.
Earlier, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath had asked senior officials to make special efforts to improve surveillance with a focus on airports, railway stations and bus stations to ensure that normalcy prevails in the state.
In another proactive move in view of rising cases of Omicron variants of coronavirus in other countries, the chief minister also instructed officials to make arrangements for genome sequencing of Covid samples and arrangements for the same will be made at the earliest at Lucknow's KGMU, SPGIMS, and medical colleges in Gorakhpur, Jhansi and Meerut. Officials have also been asked to continue extensive cleanliness, sanitisation and fogging drives to prevent the spread of other diseases.