Hindustan Times ST (Mumbai)

UP DMS, CMOS told to screen migrants

- HT Correspond­ent

Virus-related deaths in the US surpassed 2,000 on Sunday, with New York state bearing the brunt of it. Yet the US President has expressed reluctance about a mandatory quarantine while authoritie­s have only issued an advisory against non-essential

travel

LUCKNOW: The Uttar Pradesh government on Sunday directed the district magistrate­s and chief medical officers (CMO) of all 75 districts to screen and quarantine all the migrants who reached their villages from Delhi, other states and foreign countries, for 14 days.

Addressing a joint press conference, additional chief secretary (home) Awanish Kumar Awasthi and principal secretary, health said chief minister Yogi Adityanath had directed the district magistrate­s and CMOS of all the districts to screen and quarantine the migrants. The state government had also contacted the 58,000 gram pradhans and ward councillor­s across the state to assist the district administra­tion in screening and quarantine of the migrants. Those asymptomat­ic would be admitted to hospitals and other migrants would be home quarantine­d, he said.

Awasthi said there was no community spread of Sars-cov-2 in UP yet. The number of positive cases in the state was 68 till Sunday evening. All the patients had travel history or the people who came in contact with the travellers were infected. In Noida, around 20 workers in a factory were found positive as some people in the factory had travelled to United Kingdom, he said.

Principal secretary, health, Amit Mohan Prasad said none of the positive patients admitted to the hospital was on ventilator.

The condition of all the 54 was stable. Fourteen patients had recovered. To strengthen the facilities in the hospitals, the state had decided to purchase 200 ventilator­s, he said.

Prasad said the state government had decided to establish hospitals for coronaviru­s in all the 75 districts. The community health centres would be converted into dedicated Sars-cov-2 hospitals. The specialise­d hospitals would be establishe­d on the premises of the SGPGI Lucknow, KGMU Lucknow, BRD Medical College, Gorakhpur and Government Medical College, Meerut. All the other medical colleges and district hospitals at divisional headquarte­rs would be also converted into corona hospitals, he said. Prasad said the state was also tying up with the private hospitals to convert their premises into corona hospital.

Awasthi said chief minister Yogi Adityanatt­h had urged the people in other states not to move out and to follow the lockdown rules. The nodal officers appointed by the state government for various states would coordinate with the local administra­tion to provide food and shelter to the migrants, he said.

 ?? AFP ??
AFP

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