With the number of coronavirus infections increasing with every passing day, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has asked officials to ramp up Covid testing to 40,000 per day so that infected people may be identified at the earliest and admitted to hospital.
“Officials should prepare a plan for 40,000 Covid tests per day in the state. Out of this, 30,000 tests should be carried out by RT-PCR
(reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction) tests and about 10,000 by TrueNat and rapid antigen techniques,” Yogi said while presiding over a high level Unlock review meeting at Lok Bhawan here on Thursday.
He said that alertness at all levels was a prerequisite for prevention of COVID-19. “One can be saved by taking precautions and remaining alert,” he pointed out.
The chief minister directed officials to send teams of expert doctors to Kanpur Nagar, Jhansi and Varanasi, adding that caution was required in view of the spread of infection in these districts. He also asked officials to increase the number of beds in Covid hospitals in the districts as coronavirus cases went up.
Yogi said that wide publicity should be made to spread awareness among people about prevention from coronavirus. “Mass awareness is a must on use of masks, observance of social distancing and avoidance of unnecessary movement from house. Apart from the print and electronic media, posters, banners and public address systems may be used for publicity campaigns,” the chief minister said.
He said that training programmes for medical teams engaged in treatment of COVID-19 should be continued while all steps should be taken for preventing PAC and police personnel from being infected by coronavirus.
Meanwhile, Additional Chief Secretary (Health) Amit Mohan Prasad said that there were 10,373 active cases in the state while 21,127 coronavirus infected persons had recovered in the state, including 796 who were discharged from hospitals today. He said there were 10,374 people in isolation wards of Covid hospitals and 3,983 in institutional quarantine.
Prasad said on Wednesday, labs carried out tests of 32,826 samples and with it 10,36,106 samples had been tested so far. Out of the total tests on Wednesday, 1,964 5-sample pool tests and 364
10-sample pool tests, he said, adding that 260 5-sample pools and 74 10-sample pools had tested positive.
The additional chief secretary said around 1.62 lakh health teams had covered 1.49 crore houses in the state to screen over 6.03 crore people in 26,988 areas.
Prasad said that Covid helpdesks were proving to be a major success in detecting people with coronavirus symptoms. “Till date, 35,809 Covid helpdesks have been set up in government and private institutions in which 14,763 people have been detected with symptoms,” he said.
The additional chief secretary said that very soon seven RT-PCR labs would start working in different district hospitals. He said these new Covid testing labs had been set up in Aligarh, Varanasi, Gonda, Bareilly, Moradabad, Mirzapur and Balrampur Hospital in Lucknow .
Those present in the meeting included Medical Education Minister Suresh Khanna, Health Minister Jai Pratap Singh, Chief Secretary RK Tiwari, Infrastructure and Industrial Development Commissioner Alok Tandon, Agriculture Production Commissioner Alok Sinha, Additional Chief Secretary (Home and Information) Awanish Kumar Awasthi, Additional Chief Secretary (Finance) Sanjeev Mittal, Additional Chief Secretary (Revenue) Renuka Kumar, Additional Chief Secretary to Chief Minister SP Goyal, Director General of Police HC Awasthi, Additional Chief Secretary (Health) Amit Mohan Prasad, Additional Chief Secretary (Medical Education) Rajneesh Dube, Additional Chief Secretary (Rural Development and  Panchayati Raj) Manoj Kumar Singh, Additional Chief Secretary (MSME) Navneet Sehgal, Additional Chief Secretary (Agriculture) Devesh Chaturvedi, Principal Secretary to Chief Minister Sanjay Prasad, Secretary to Chief Minister Alok Kumar, Director Information Shishir and other senior officers.