E-Paper
Union Home Minister favours unified Delhi-NCR to deal with Coronavirus
Ghaziabad:
Ghaziabad:
According to Ghaziabad officials who attended the meeting with Union home minister Amit Shah, via video, along with senior officials of Delhi and areas of the National Capital Region (NCR) for a review of the fight against Covid-19 in the region, the minister did not favour restricting borders movement between states across the NCR
“The home minister said that NCR should be treated as a single unit due to inter connectivity. He further said that interstate border regulation is not practical and he sort of discouraged border restrictions,” said an officer from Ghaziabad district administration, asking not to be identified.
The Ghaziabad administration on April 22 had imposed restrictions at its borders citing rising number of Covid-19 cases in the district, in wake of people travelling to and from Delhi
Additional restrictions were put in place on May 27. Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal on June 1 also announced closure of borders of the National Capital for a week and lifted restrictions on June 7.
Similar restrictions are in place at the Noida-Delhi borders.
In June, a three-Judge bench of the Supreme Court had asked the Centre to convene a meeting of officials from the three states across which national capital region spans – Delhi, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh – within a week and come up with a common portal to facilitate interstate travel such as the one between Delhi and Noida or Delhi and Gurugram.
The UP government on Friday, during hearing on a petition, informed the apex court restrictions between UP and Delhi will continue.
Chief minister Yogi Adityanath on Wednesday had also suggested a uniform policy for the NCR to effectively check Covid-19 , although he batted for sealing borders for the time being.
The CM had made these suggestions in a video conference during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s virtual meeting with chief ministers on Wednesday. “The Union home minister also said rates have been decided if any private hospital wishes to operate as a Covid treatment facility in NCR and that state governments should consider this. A committee has decided the rates and these will be circulated to all. He also asked that assessment of all hospitals in different districts be submitted to the Centre,” the officer said.
“Regarding home isolation, he said in order to control Covid cases, they can consider home isolation or quarantine facilities,” he added.
At present, UP, unlike Delhi, is admitting Covid-19 positive patients, whether symptomatic or asymptomatic, to dedicated Covid hospitals. According to sources, Shah also suggested that NCR districts can consider adopting the price limit of Rs 2,400 fixed for Covid-19 testing in Delhi.
On Thursday, the UP health officials in an order directed that the rate of Covid samples (single step) sent to private laboratories by government or private hospitals will be ₹20000 while rate of ₹2,500 will be applicable for samples collected on their own by private laboratories.
These directions were given by Amit Mohan Prasad, UP’s principal secretary (health).
There were 39 more positive cases in Ghaziabad on Thursday while four more deaths were reported. With this addition, the tally of Covid-19 cases in Ghaziabad stands at 757 while the total deaths stand at 36 till June 18.
“Three of four deaths took place in Ghaziabad while one took place in Meerut,” Ghaziabad chief medical officer Dr NK Gupta said.
