On a day the total coronavirus count in the country crossed 9 lakh, the number of infected people in UP reached close to 40,000, accounting for nearly 4 per cent of the country’s caseload. (File photo)
On a day the total coronavirus count in the country crossed 9 lakh, the number of infected people in Uttar Pradesh reached close to 40,000, accounting for nearly 4 per cent of the country’s caseload.
The state recorded 1,656 new cases in the last 24 hours, a bulk of which came from five districts – Ghaziabad (182), Gautam Buddh Nagar (167), Lucknow (152) and Jhansi (137). Other significant additions were from Kanpur Nagar (97) and Gorakhpur (58).
The state also recorded another high in the daily death count. With the addition of 28 more deaths in the last 24 hours, the total fatalities in the state reached 983 — 17 short of 1,000. Kanpur Nagar reported highest with four fresh deaths, taking the total fatality count in the district to 90 – the third-highest in the state with Agra (95) and Meerut (93) being the top two districts.
Capital Lucknow reported three deaths in the past 24 hours, taking the total fatality count in the district to 36. Jhansi, which has one of the highest fatality rates, also reported three more deaths, taking its total count to 39. While Gautam Buddh Nagar reported two more deaths, there was no fresh death in neighbouring Ghaziabad.
Besides, two deaths were reported from Meerut, Prayagraj, Sambhal and Mathura, and one each from Agra, Firozabad, Varanasi, Rampur, Pratapgarh, Shamli, Shahjahanpur and Sonbhadra, a health department official said.
Meanwhile, 778 more people recovered, taking the total recoveries to 24,981 — 19 short of 25,000. With this, the total number of active cases in the state stood at 13,760 with Lucknow having the highest – 1,591, followed by Ghaziabad with 1,295 cases. The highest number of recoveries in the past 24 hours was also reported from Ghaziabad.
Additional Chief Secretary (Home) Awanish Kumar Awasthi, meanwhile, said that Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has instructed officials to ramp up testing and achieve the target of 50,000 tests per day. “Yesterday, 40,984 samples were tested across the state. Till now, the state has tested samples of 11,57,273 people for coronavirus,” he said.
In a series of tweets, the government also said that while UP ranks sixth in the number of cases in India, it ranks third in the country in the number of tests. “Only Maharashtra, with almost 6.8 times, the number of UP cases and Tamil Nadu with almost 3.7 times of cases, are ahead of UP in the number of tests,” it said.
Amid this, the state government issued detailed directives for the weekend lockdown to be observed in the state for checking the spread of the virus.
All urban and rural haats, markets, galla mandis and business establishments in the state would remain closed during the weekend, and on other weekdays, they will function from 9 am to 9 pm, an official said on Tuesday.
Chief Secretary R K Tiwari, in a letter to all divisional commissioners, district magistrates, other administrative and police officers, said the lockdown would come into force at 10 pm on Friday till 5 am on Monday.
—With PTI INPUTS