Yogi minister's letter on poor handling of COVID-19 pandemic in Lucknow goes viral

LUCKNOW: The law minister in the Yogi Adityanath cabinet, Brijesh Pathak, has written a letter to express his angst over the lackadaisical attitude of the health authorities in Lucknow which is going through a big COVID-19 surge and topped the state tally with 5382 cases on Tuesday. The state logged 18021 fresh active cases of COVID-19.

In his confidential letter, written on Monday, to additional chief secretary, medical health, Amit Mohan Prasad and principal secretary, medical education, Alok Kumar, the minister writes: “I am shocked to find that while government hospitals and labs are taking around 4-5 days to give the test reports, private laboratories have been asked to stop Covid testing.”

The letter, now viral on social media, is a potential tool for opposition parties to condemn the state government’s handling of the pandemic surge.

In a single-page letter, Pathak, a sitting MLA from Lucknow Central, has expressed his anguish over the fact that he had received a frantic call from the residence of Yogesh Praveen, an author and expert on Lucknow and Awadh, informing about his critical condition and that an ambulance was needed. “I contacted the office of the chief medical officer, Lucknow, but the ambulance never reached and
Yogesh Praveen ji died,” he added.

The law minister has also drawn attention towards the alleged paucity of test kits in the state capital. He claimed that when there was a need for at least 17,000 test kits a day for the coronavirus test, hardly 10,000 were available in the state capital labs.

“I am flooded with requests, desperate pleas from citizens of Lucknow to save their lives and often find the district health authorities insensitive and don’t find it necessary to respond to the distress calls,” said Pathak adding that when the issue was brought to the knowledge of the health minister, the officers started picking the phones but hardly to any benefit of the common man.

Asking the higher authorities to immediately intervene to put medical infrastructure in order at the earliest, the minister wrote that patients were getting their test reports in a week’s time. “Ambulances are not reaching the patients in time, CMO office is taking two days to give referral slips to patients for admission to any COVID-facility,” wrote Pathak.