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Uttar Pradesh first state to reach milestone of 60 million Covid tests, says Yogi Adityanath govt
Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath says Kasganj and Aligarh have joined Shravasti on the list of districts with no active Covid-19 cases at present and announces they will be rewarded if trend holds
The state government on Thursday evening announced that Uttar Pradesh had crossed the six crore (60 million) Covid test mark. It was the first state in the country to reach the milestone, the state government said.
The announcement came hours after chief minister Yogi Adityanath said the state was poised to reach this milestone.
Adityanath also said the state now had three districts — Kasganj, Shravasti and Aligarh — that were without any active Covid-19 cases as of Thursday. The state government would reward them if they did not report any fresh cases in the next week, he said at a high-level Covid-19 review meeting here. He had first made the announcement about Shravasti on Wednesday.
He also said, “Yesterday, 33 districts in the state did not report any fresh Covid cases and the active cases there are in single digits.”
“With concerted efforts, the second wave of the pandemic is well under control in the state. All the patients of Covid-19 in Kasganj, Shravasti and Aligarh have recovered, and this happened because of teamwork. The public representatives, health workers, frontline workers, monitoring committees, local administration, and people played an important role in this. The efforts and awareness should continue. At the same time, the three districts should continue with aggressive testing,” he said.
He said Uttar Pradesh had an aggressive “trace, test, treat and vaccinate” policy.
In the past 24 hours, a total of 2.59 lakh (259,000) samples were tested and 112 new cases were detected while 258 patients recovered, the chief minister said.
“The positivity rate is a mere 0.04% and the recovery rate is 98.6%. Since April 30, there has been a steady fall in the number of active cases in the state. At present there are only 1,789 active cases in the state of which 1,334 are in home isolation,” he said.
He said that in the past 24 hours a total of 7.1 lakh (710,000) Covid-19 vaccines doses were administered in the state, taking the total number of jabs to 3.52 crore (35.2 million) in Uttar Pradesh since January 16.
CM for proper upkeep of statues, memorials
The chief minister asked the officials concerned to ensure proper maintenance of statues of great personalities, their memorials and various other memorial spots.
“Run a statewide campaign for cleaning and maintenance of these inspiring spots,” he said.
PM to inaugurate nine new medical colleges in UP, reiterates Yogi
Chief minister Yogi Adityanath on Thursday reiterated that Prime Minister Narendra Modi will soon inaugurate nine medical colleges in the state —one each in Mirzapur, Ghazipur, Deoria, Etah, Fatehpur, Hardoi, Pratapgarh, Siddharthnagar and Jaunpur.
“With this, 59 of the 75 districts of the state will have medical colleges. The state government will establish medical colleges in the remaining 16 districts on the PPP (public-private partnership) model,” he said.
He asked the officials concerned to begin preparation of the government policy for making PPP medical colleges in these 16 districts.
