Inaugurating hi-tech labs for COVID-19 and dengue tests, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath said that the state government was committed to protecting its residents from these dreaded diseases and therefore it had taken steps to prevent the spread of these diseases.

“As both the Centre and the state government are committed to providing the best facilities available, we are looking at technology to lessen the worries of the masses,” he said while inaugurating the hi-tech labs in private and state sectors here on Monday.

These labs will operate in seven private medical colleges, including in Hind Institute of Medical Sciences, Barabanki, Integral Institute of Medical Sciences, Lucknow, Rama Medical college and Research Institute, Hapur, FH Medical College and Hospital, Firozabad, TS Mishra Medical College, Lucknow, Heritage Institute of Medical Sciences, Varanasi and Muzaffarnagar Medical College, Muzaffarnagar.

In the state-run hospitals, the labs have been set up in medical colleges of Prayagraj, Agra, Kanpur Nagar and  Gorakhpur.

In the last eight months when the world was waging a war against the COVID-19 pandemic, Uttar Pradesh was able to control the spread of the novel coronavirus infection with better Covid management. In March, only 77 Covid tests were done but on November 23, over 1.75 lakh tests were done per day, taking the total number of tests in the state to 1.80 crore, the chief minister said.

“The efforts of the UP government have been appreciated by the WHO because we were able to back-trace the COVID-19 cases through intensified surveillance,” he said.