Uttar Pradesh witnessed a further a decline in the number of fresh COVID-19 cases with only five people testing positive for novel coronavirus infection across the state during the past 24 hours.

With this, the active Covid caseload in the most populous state of India came down to 86 on Saturday evening.

The Covid control mechanism got a further boost as 44 districts of the state became coronavirus free with active and new cases declining to zero.

The drop in fresh and active Covid cases in Amethi, Amroha, Ayodhya, Azamgarh, Budaun, Baghpat, Balrampur, Banda, Barabanki, Bareilly, Basti, Bhadohi, Bijnor, Bulandshahr, Chandauli, Chitrakoot, Etah, Etawah, Fatehpur, Firozabad, Gonda, Hamirpur, Hardoi, Hathras, Jaunpur, Jhansi, Kasganj, Kaushambi, Kushinagar, Lakhimpur Kheri, Mahoba, Mainpuri, Mau, Mirzapur, Moradabad, Pilibhit, Pratapgarh, Rampur, Shahjahanpur, Shamli, Shravasti, Siddharthnagar, Sitapur and Sonbhadra indicate complete elimination of coronavirus from over 64 per cent of the state.

In what comes as another relief, none of the 75 districts in the state have reported fresh coronavirus infections in double digits lately.

"Scaling up stringent testing mechanism, the state has managed to break the novel coronavirus chain with effective protocols in place and by sticking to the time-tested strategy of case isolation and contact tracing, combined with an alert community surveillance system.

Uttar Pradesh has tested the maximum number of 8.71 crore samples for the coronavirus infection in India," a government spokesman said.

“Meanwhile, Uttar Pradesh has administered over 15.72 crore Covid vaccine doses so far and the impressive pace of vaccination has set an example for other states to emulate. Maharashtra lags behind UP with 10 crore vaccine doses administered so far,” the spokesman said.