Fresh coronavirus cases drop in UP, but virus remains lethal

LUCKNOW: The number of fresh Covid cases went down further, infusing a breather for a pandemic battered state on Sunday. The state recorded 23,333 cases which was around 3,500 less than 26,847 recorded on Saturday. The number of deaths, however, continued to remain pegged at 296, which was marginally down from Saturday`s figure of 298.

The number of active cases also recorded a downward trend - it came from 2,45,726 to 2,33,981 within 24 hours. Additional chief secretary, medical and health, Amit Mohan Prasad, asked people to stay cautious and all precautions despite the improvement in situation. The decline in the number of cases came in even as the state government extended the partial corona lockdown by a week till May 17. Lucknow continued to top the chart with 1,436 new corona cases, which was a considerable drop from Saturday`s 2179. The state capital was followed by Meerut which recorded 1,425 cases of infection. Varanasi and Gorakhpur recorded 909 and 947 fresh cases, respectively.

Lucknow, at the same time, saw 3546 people getting discharged from the hospital, which was, however, lesser in comparison to 4,515 people getting discharged a day ago. More number of people getting discharged in comparison to fresh cases, experts said, could potentially lessen the immense pressure on the state health system.

This was, however, not the case with Meerut where the number of people getting discharged from hospital dropped from 1,623 to 1,362 within 24 hours. According to the health bulletin, the state government carried out 2,29,186 tests, taking the total numbers of tests conducted since the outbreak of pandemic last year to over 4.29 crore. Of the total tests conducted, over 15 lakh people have tested positive for the infection.