‘UP to vaccinate parents of children below 10 yrs’

KANPUR : Preparations were underway to vaccinate parents of children below 10 years of age in Uttar Pradesh before the possible third wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, chief minister Yogi Adityanath said on Saturday.

“We will provide protection to the parents of all children less than 10 years of age. The arrangements are going on,” he said in an interaction with reporters in Saifai.

In Kanpur, he said the Covid-19 vaccination would be further accelerated from June 1, adding that Kanpur would be the principal treatment centre for black fungus in the region.

He also said he had instructed officials to reconstruct, provide all modern equipment and restart a municipal hospital for children, which was closed for years.

Every medical university and medical college would have a 300-bed paediatric ward ready ahead of the third wave, he said.

In addition, all district hospitals would prepare 25-bed paediatric wards each.

Thirty oxygen plants would be set up in the entire Kanpur division, comprising six districts, he said.

He also said the Covid-19 vaccination of judicial officers, staffers and their families was

going on at the Allahabad high court and the Lucknow bench.

The next step, he said, would be setting up separate centres for judicial officers and journalists in all the districts in the state. The government had begun vaccinating journalists in Noida and Lucknow and the same would be extended throughout the state, the chief minister added.

He further said 1.62 crore (16.2 million) people were given Covid-19 vaccine doses in the state.“The state is successfully moving ahead in the fight against corona. There were predictions that there would be 1 lakh cases a day in Uttar Pradesh,” he said, adding that the government controlled the situation successfully.

“UP reported around 38,000 cases on April 26, the highest to date and 6000 cases today (Saturday),” he said, crediting the control of Covid situation to mass screening of suspected patients by surveillance committees. (Uttar Pradesh on Saturday reported 6,046 fresh Covid-19 cases taking the tally of cases to 16,65,176 and the death toll went up to 18,978 with 226 more fatalities in the last 24 hours, according to official data).

The government, he said, had increased the testing capacity, Covid beds and other facilities in the state substantially.

He said patients in government hospitals and the hospitals taken over by the administration were being provided free treatment and food.

The chief minister inspected Pargahi Bangar village in Kalyanpur in Kanpur.