‘Breaking the Chain’ in UP: Rigorous door-to-door testing in villages, vaccination on war-footing is Yogi govt’s top priority

New Delhi: As the active number of Covid cases have been declining steadily, Uttar Pradesh continues to fight the second wave of novel coronavirus effectively and has also formulated a stringent action plan to deal with the possible third wave of the virus as predicted by experts.

To further curb the spread of the deadly virus and to minimise its devastating impact, the state has equipping itself to fight the anticipated third Covid wave with complete preparedness, said Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath while addressing various eminent media personalities and later on in a press conference on Sunday at Noida Film City.

As per predictions, the third Covid wave could severely affect the children, women and the vulnerable groups.

Reacting to the expert assessments on a probable third wave, immediate directions have been issued to ramp up the health infrastructure in all the Community Health Centres and set up paediatric ICUs with a minimum capacity of 100 beds in all the districts for proper and special care of the children. With this, directions have been given to set up additionally in the medical colleges.

Door-to-Door Massive Testing Drive in UP Villages

In order to ‘Break The Chain’ of the transmission, the state under its rigorous T3 regime- Trace , Test and Treat’ has conducted over 4.46 crore tests so far. Over 2.5 lakh daily tests are being carried out on a regular basis.

To contain the spread of the virus in rural pockets of Uttar Pradesh, according to the instructions, Health workers along with surveillance committee members are visiting each household to examine and trace persons with symptoms and give them medical kits consisting of medicines for COVID -19 More than 4 lakh members of surveillance committees are conducting door-to-door tests, enabling early detection, isolation and treatment and keeping the virus from spreading further in more than 97000 villages.

“The concerned authorities as directed have been providing free and proper treatment with medicine kits to the patients even developing mild symptoms,” explained the CM, adding that, “early treatment is being provided without waiting for test results to not let the patient get critical.”

Furthermore, the CM said that strict directives have been issued to facilitate easy and timely availability of medical resources, ambulances, and other covid-19 related supplies to any person in need. Besides, the authorities have also been directed that if the patient’s RT-PCR report is negative and the patient still shows symptoms of corona, a digital x-ray must be done to get the correct result.

The Vaccination Drive must be continued on a war-footing: CM

As a result of swift measures and alertness, the state has been recording more daily recoveries and reducing number of fresh cases since the beginning of May itself.

The discharges were more than double of the fresh cases in the last 24 hours, as the number of fresh cases came down to around 10 thousand, which is the lowest since the end of last month. The daily Covid positivity rate — the number of positive cases against the total tests done — dipped to 5 percent which had earlier gone up to 22 percent.

The CM added that to give a wider coverage of the immunisation programme, the state will continue to conduct the vaccination drive in a planned, organised and phased manner to provide a safety shield to every person free of cost.

Leading in terms of administrating vaccine to people, a r pprox 1.50 crore doses of the vaccine have been administered so far in Uttar Pradesh.

Under the Phase III of the vaccination programme, people aged above 18 are being provided the safety shield free of cost in over 23 high-load districts including GB Nagar, after which the state will target to provide vaccine to the rural populace residing in the villages of Uttar Pradesh.

He further asserted that directions have been issued to make special provisions for priority inoculation of people living in rural areas by facilitating walk-in onsite enrolment for the immunisation programme at the Common Service Centers across the state which will also in turn reduce the load on the Community Health Centers (CHCs) and will help in maintaining the social distancing norms.

“I have myself been monitoring and taking the stock of arrangements at the ground level to ensure complete preparedness. I have so far visited Varanasi, Gorakhpur, Agra, Mathura, Aligarh and other rural areas and will continue to do so,” he added.

Encephalitis experience comes handy to save children and women

In response to a question, he said while preparing extensively to compete against the possible third wave of Corona, the past experience of Encephalitis would come handy. The encephalitis, which had created havoc in the state, especially in the Eastern UP, for many decades, had been controlled by 98 percent.

“We had made a comprehensive action plan while fighting the menace and with the result, the casualties which used to be between 1200 and 1500 every year came down to 63 last year, “the CM said while pressing home the point that on the basis of Encephalitis experiences, the instructions have been given to protect children and women from the third wave of Corona by setting up dedicated hospitals and ICUs. A coordination committee is formed, which will work tin rural areas and urban areas.

He said that the an advisory has been issued to tackle black fungus. An action plan has been made to prevent this. Advisory has been sent to CMOs, Medical Colleges and District Hospitals. Training is also being given for Black Fungus.

Referring to Noida, he said that while there were more than 10,000 cases on April 27 but now there were less than 400. The number of active cases in the entire state has come down to 1.63 lakh in the last 24 hours.