‘Ramp up testing’
With the number of coronavirus positive cases rising with every passing day, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has asked officials to increase the number of beds in Covid hospitals to 1.5 lakh by the end of June, 2020 besides ramping up coronavirus testing to 20,000 per day by June 20.
For the last three days, UP has reported over 500 coronavirus cases with western Uttar Pradesh taking a lead in the spike.
Chairing a high-level Unlock 1.0 review meeting at Lok Bhawan here on Thursday, the chief minister said that there was no need to be scared of coronavirus and the only thing was to maintain all preventive discipline during unlock.
“Make sure nobody moves out without a mask and everyone maintains social distancing,” he said.
The chief minister said that police patrolling should be done to check crowd gathering while strict measures need to be applied in the containment zones. He also asked officials to maintain adequate supply of essentials in the containment zones.
The chief minister reminded officials that mass awareness about COVID-19 had to be taken up through public address system and PRV 112 and magistrate vehicles could be used for this.
“The public address systems should be installed at the crossings and other vantage locations so that people could be made aware of the preventive steps,” he said.
The chief minister also directed officials to nominate a special secretary-level officer at the government level to get direct feedback from non-Covid and Covid hospitals of all the districts. “Besides, the chief medical officers should inspect and monitor arrangements in these hospitals,” he added.
He further asked officials to set up Covid help desk in hospitals to impart knowledge about coronavirus and its prevention,” he said.
The chief minister directed all district magistrates to conduct health check-ups of the inmates of Old age homes, children’s homes and women shelter homes to find out if any of them was infected with coronavirus.
He said random testing should be conducted to assess the actual position of the coronavirus spread.
Yogi said that as many as 70,000 community surveillance committees were functioning in rural and urban areas of the state and it was important to get feedback on their works through regular communication.
The chief minister said all arrangements should be completed in time for the next phase of foodgrain distribution drive commencing on June 20. He asked officials to ensure there was no irregularity in the distribution mechanism or weight and measure during the drive and that all the needy got the food grain.
Yogi directed all chief veterinarians to make regular inspections of cow shelters in their districts. He said the officers should ensure that cow shelters had proper supply of fodder and health check-up facilities for cattle.
Those present in the meeting included Medical Education Minister Suresh Khanna, Health Minister Jai Pratap Singh, Minister of State for Health Atul Garg, Chief Secretary RK Tiwari, Agriculture Production Commissioner Alok Sinha, Infrastructure and Industrial Development Commissioner Alok Tandon, Additional Chief Secretary (Home and Information) Awanish Kumar Awasthi, Additional Chief Secretary (Finance) Sanjeev Mittal, Additional Chief Secretary (Revenue) Renuka Kumar, Director General of Police HC Awasthi, Principal Secretary (Health) Amit Mohan Prasad, Principal Secretary (Medical Education) Rajneesh Dubey, Principal Secretary (MSME) Navneet Sehgal, Principal Secretary (Agriculture) Devesh Chaturvedi, Principal Secretary to Chief Minister SP Goyal and Sanjay Prasad, Secretary to Chief Minister Alok Kumar, Director Information Shishir and other senior officers.
