Anxiety over arrivals
“Even though Uttar Pradesh is the most populous State in the country, the number of COVID-19 cases are comparatively lower than in other States, especially when we look at the population to positive cases ratio.” This is the refrain of senior officials of the State government, including the Health Department’s Principal Secretary, Amit Mohan Prasad, in their briefings on the COVID-19 relief activities in Uttar Pradesh. Officials have also stressed that an important reason for this situation is widespread screening and surveillance. Talking to the media on May 5, Prasad said: “So far 50,193 teams have been involved in the surveillance work and have covered more than 43.56 lakh houses and screened at least 2.16 crore people.”
However, the Union Health Ministry’s tabulation on the evening of May 5 showed that deaths due to COVID-19 in Uttar Pradesh had shot up by 71 percentage points over the preceding seven days. A similar tabulation for active COVID-19 cases for the same period showed that the rate of increase in Uttar Pradesh was just 16 percentage points, much lower than the national average of 45 percentage points. Talking about these figures, a senior Union Health Ministry official pointed out, off the record, that the message for the Uttar Pradesh government, and indeed for all governments, was that screening and surveillance needed to be followed up with