414 migrant labourers who came back to UP show COVID-19 symptoms
NEW DELHI: Hordes of migrants have returned to Uttar Pradesh from different parts of the country during the coronavirus lockdown. These workers were stranded in other states and had no work.
Out of those who returned at least 414 migrant workers are exhibiting symptoms of Coronavirus disease Covid19, as per sources. The health authorities in Uttar Pradesh said that all the migrant workers are being tested. The health department, with the help of ASHA workers, have so far tested 3.50 lakh workers, it further reported. Uttar Pradesh health secretary Amit Mohan Prasad said that these migrant labourers are first taken to shelter homes where they undergo thermal screening. The authorities then conduct rapid testing and pool testing. If a single case is found positive in a pool, all the group members are tested individually.
The labourers who do not display any symptoms are then sent to home quarantine for 21 days. Village and mohalla committees are tasked with monitoring those workers.
As many as 590 trains have arrived in Uttar Pradesh so far with over 7.60 lakh migrant labourers from other states, a senior official said here on Monday. Additional Chief Secretary, Home and Information, Awanish Kumar Awasthi told reporters that 12,000 government buses have been deployed in the state to ferry the arriving workers safely to their homes.
Additionally, 200 private buses have been roped in in each of the 75 districts to facilitate their movement, he said.
Till Sunday, 16.50 lakh workers had arrived in the state through trains, buses and other modes of transport, he said.
Meanwhile, six more persons died of COVID-19 and 141 tested positive for infection on Monday, raising the fatalities till date to the disease to 118 and infected cases to 4,605 in Uttar Pradesh.
“A total of 4,605 cases have been reported so far in the state from 75 districts, of which 1,704 are active while 2,783 people have been discharged from hospitals after recovery. Till now, 118 deaths have been reported so far in the state,” an official release issued here said.
While three deaths were reported from Sant Kabir Nagar, two were reported from Varanasi and one from Kushinagar, it said.
Of total 118 deaths, maximum 27 were in Agra, followed 19 in Meerut, 11 in Moradabad, eight each in Aligarh and Kanpur, five in Gautam Buddha Nagar, three in Varanasi, four each in Sant Kabir Nagar, Firozabad, Mathura and Jhansi and two each in Mainpuri and Ghaziabad.