YOGI BRIEFS PM ON EFFORTS TO CONTAIN COVID-19

LUCKNOW: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday evening held a virtual meeting with chief minister Yogi Adityanath to learn about the Covid-19 situation in Uttar Pradesh and the steps the state government was taking to control the infection.

The chief minister informed PM Modi that the government was augmenting Covid beds and oxygen supply, a government statement said. To a question by PM, Yogi said 104 private and 125 government labs were engaged in Covid tests and, so far, over 3.84 crore tests were done in the state, according to the same statement.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday evening held a virtual meeting with chief minister Yogi Adityanath to learn about the Covid-19 situation in Uttar Pradesh and the steps the state government was taking to control the infection.

The chief minister informed PM Modi that the government was augmenting Covid beds and oxygen supply, a government statement said.

To a question by PM, Yogi said 104 private and 125 government labs were engaged in Covid tests and, so far, over 3.84 crore tests were done in the state, according to the same statement.

“On April 18, the private labs in the state did more than 19,000 RT-PCR tests. The govis ernment has also decided that if the private labs do not get enough samples to run RT-PCR tests, then the districts’ administration would send the samples collected by government institutions to the private labs and would pay Rs 500 to the private labs for each test,” said Yogi according to the statement.

He said some vested interests were spreading rumours that private labs were not doing tests in the state, while the truth was diametrically opposite.

“Private labs have done over 17 lakh tests of which 8,84,330 were done by RT-PCR technique,” the chief minister said.

Yogi also told PM that the government would act against those spreading rumours.