Govt starts random testing in UP jails

LUCKNOW: State authorities have started random swab sampling of prisoners and jail staff to check spread of Sars-Cov-2 infection in UP prisons after 10 inmates of Agra central prison tested positive for Covid-19 on Wednesday, said senior prison officials.

Giving this information, director general, UP prison administration and reform services, Anand Kumar said the exercise was started on Thursday.

He said the random sampling will be done in all 71 prisons in the state and also in 48 temporary jails set up during the lockdown period. Sharing further details, another prison official said samples of 83 inmates and 27 jail personnel of seven prisons were collected on the first day of the drive. He said the samples of 25 inmates of temporary jails of Sultanpur and Meerut were also collected on Thursday.

The prison official said samples of over 100 inmates and 30 jail staff were collected from over a dozen jails on Friday. He said the process of random sampling will be expedited in prisons across the state from the next week.

Earlier, samples of around 100 jail inmates and 14 staff of Agra central prison were collected for testing on Wednesday, said jail officials. Also, all of them have been kept in isolation and their report is awaited.

Around 17 inmates from Agra central prison and Moradabad district jail have tested corona positive.

Besides, five inmates of temporary jails, including three from Kanpur temporary jail and one each from Saharanpur and Sultanpur jails, tested positive earlier.