The Uttar Pradesh government on Wednesday announced to seal the coronavirus hotspots in 15 districts till the end of the 21 day lockdown period on April 14.

These districts include Agra, Ghaziabad, Gautam Buddh Nagar, Lucknow, Varanasi, Shamli, Meerut, Bareilly, Bulandshahr, Kanpur, Basti, Ferozabad, Saharanpur, Maharajganj and Sitapur.

According to UP additional chief secretary Awanish Kumar Awasthi, a total of 104 coronavirus hotspots have been identified, spread across 81 police station areas in these districts, where in ‘complete lockdown’ would be enforced from tonight. The patrolling would be intensified in these areas for ensuring full compliance.

Agra has topped with total 22 hotspots of the pandemic, followed by Ghaziabad 13 with Lucknow, Gautam Buddh Nagar and Kanpur accounting for 12 hotspots each.

With the UP coronavirus positive cases number jumping to 343 so far with 187 cases pertaining to the Tablighi Jamaat gathering in Delhi coming to light in the last few days, the state decided to seal all the affected localities in these 15 district to prevent its spread in the immediate vicinities.

In effect, these localities would be under curfew like situation with the state government announcing to cancel all the passes issued to the local residents and professionals.

“There would complete prohibition on the movement of people in these areas and the authorities would make arrangements for the doorstep delivery of all the essential commodities, including food, milk, medicines etc,” Awasthi informed adding no shop including banks would be allowed to open.

He, however, clarified that the sealing would not be enforced in the entire districts but only specific localities till the morning of April 15 even as he was non committal on the lifting of the lockdown in the state saying a decision would be taken in due course and accordingly announced.

Now, these sealed localities would be sanitised and all the affected people and those coming in direct contact of the coronavirus patients would be identified.

“There would be no movement of people even within the inner lanes of these affected localities and the police would put up barricades for this purpose,” UP Director General of Police (DGP) Hitesh Chandra Awasthi told the media here this evening.

Meanwhile, the state will also issue a government order (GO) mandating every person to wear a mask when venturing outdoors to prevent the spread of the coronavirus infection, UP medical, health and family welfare principal secretary Amit Mohan Prasad said.

He further said the state coronavirus had started to flatten after the sudden spurt in the cases owing to the Tablighi Jamaat gathering. “Now we will double the sample testing to 1,500 daily to prevent the possibility of the community spread of the disease even in those districts which have so far not reported any coronavirus positive cases so far.”