With spike in cases, state government ropes in special teams for Ghaziabad, GB Nagar

Ghaziabad: The Uttar Pradesh government on Tuesday decided to send special teams to different districts, including Ghaziabad and Gautam Budh Nagar, which are witnessing spike in fresh Covid-19 cases

Ghaziabad: The Uttar Pradesh government on Tuesday decided to send special teams to different districts, including Ghaziabad and Gautam Budh Nagar, which are witnessing spike in fresh Covid-19 cases. The teams will take up a review of testing and treatment facilities in the respective districts, officials said.

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According to the state’s daily Covid-19 bulletin released on Tuesday, the districts of Ghaziabad and GB Nagar have 410 and 579 active cases, respectively, while two deaths due to Covid-19 have also taken place in GB Nagar in the past two days. Overall, there were 5,928 fresh cases on Tuesday in the state, showed the data.

“The chief minister has directed that special teams, which include special secretary rank officers and other officers from the health and medical education departments, to be sent to the districts having high caseload. These include districts like Lucknow, Varanasi, Ghaziabad, GB Nagar, Bareilly, Kanpur, Prayagraj, and Jhansi, among others,” said Navneet Sehgal, UP’s additional chief secretary (information).

“The teams will take a review of testing and treatment facilities and about the preparations being made by the respective districts. They will also ensure that the best treatment and facilities available are given to the Covid-19 patients,” he added.

In Ghaziabad, the sample positivity rate has spiked over 1% in April and stands at 1.36% in first five days with 324 positive reports resulting out of total 23,878 reports.

The last time sample positivity rate had gone over 1% was in December 2020 when it was 2.99% (3,034 positive reports of 101,496 total reports). The positivity rates had, however, remained below 1% in the months of January (0.74%), February (0.31%) and March (0.69%) this year.

Sample positivity rate refers to the number of samples testing positive per 100 samples tested. Sometimes, patients take more than one test for confirmation and so, total positive samples can be higher than total positive cases, the officials explained.

“We have special surveillance drives taken up in high caseload residential areas. Besides, our teams are working to take up testing, contact tracing and allocation of facility for Covid patients. We have also directed hospitals to be ready and arrange sufficient number of beds in order to deal with a surge in Covid cases. In our district, the situation is under control and we are geared up to deal with any upsurge,” said Ajay Shankar Pandey, district magistrate, Ghaziabad.

In terms of number of Covid cases, the district during first five days of April has witnessed 256 news cases with 42 in residential segment of Carte (comprising localities like Shastri Nagar), 37 in Indirapuram, 32 in Sahibabad, 34 in Vaishali and 15 in Vasundhara, among others. In the month of March, the district had registered a total of 565 cases.

Suhas LY, district magistrate of GB Nagar, said that the positivity rate has risen in GB Nagar as well. “The state government had sent a team last year. We will be taking up review with the special team arriving this year too. It will be better in terms of forming strategy and deal with fresh Covid upsurge,” he added.

In its April 3 order, the state government issued guidelines for identification of containment zones in residential areas and group housing societies, but did not put any restriction on movement of people in a containment zone.

Experts said that movement of people will have to be restricted to check the spread of infection. “If there is no restriction on movement of people in and out of containment zones, it is of no use. At present, we are not seeing much of enforcement against people not wearing mask and not maintaining social distancing,” said Dr Ashish Agarwal, president of Indian Medical Association -- Ghaziabad.