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UP to administer Covid-19 vaccines to beneficiaries free of cost, announces CM Adityanath
The announcement comes a day after the Centre announced that vaccination against Covid-19 will be open for everyone above the age of 18 from May 1.
A day after the Centre announced that vaccination against the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) will be open to everyone above the age of 18, the Uttar Pradesh government said on Tuesday that vaccines will be administered to the beneficiaries free of cost from May 1, when the said phase of the vaccination drive is scheduled to commence across the country.
The decision to make jabs free of cost was taken by the state government at a Cabinet meeting chaired by chief minister Yogi Adityanath.
"In the Cabinet meeting today, we have decided to administer free vaccines to those above the age of 18 years," Adityanath said in a tweet, roughly translated from Hindi.
Amid a rise in daily Covid-19 cases, the Uttar Pradesh government also imposed a weekend curfew in the entire state and a night curfew during weekdays in all districts having more than 500 cases till further orders from Tuesday. The night curfew will be effective from 8pm to 7am, while the weekend curfew will be enforced from Friday 8pm to Monday 7am.
During both sets of curfew, restrictions will be imposed on all non-essential activities.
Night curfew was already in place in Kanpur, Gorakhpur, Gautam Buddh Nagar, Allahabad, Meerut, Ghaziabad, Bareilly and Muzaffarnagar districts and the Lucknow Municipal Corporation area of the state.
Read more: Amid surge in Covid-19 cases, UP closes schools for Classes 1 to 12 till Apr 30
Uttar Pradesh has been consistently reporting a surge in daily Covid-19 infections. On Tuesday, the infection tally crossed the nine-lakh mark with 29,754 cases recorded in the past 24 hours, according to a bulletin by the health department Also, the death toll from Covid-19 in the northern state crossed the 10,000-mark, with 162 more fatalities recorded. Thus far, 10,159 people have succumbed to the viral disease and the infection count is currently at 909,405.
The recovery count rose to 675,702 in the state during the same period with over 14,391 patients discharged in the past 24 hours. Meanwhile, the number of active cases in the state stands at 223,544.
Out of the fresh cases reported, the maximum number were from Lucknow at 5,014, followed by 2,175 in Allahabad, 1,740 in Kanpur, 1,637 in Varanasi, 1,287 in Meerut, 913 in Bareilly and 640 in Gautam Buddha Nagar.
Of the fresh deaths recorded, a maximum 28 were reported from Kanpur, followed by 19 from Lucknow, 13 from Allahabad, eight from Gautam Buddh Nagar and seven from Varanasi.
(with agency inputs)
