Targeted sampling drive in UP to assess spread of virus

LUCKNOW: The state health department has decided to launch a week-long targeted sampling drive across Uttar Pradesh from Friday, principal secretary, health and family welfare, Amit Mohan Prasad said on Thursday. The drive will aim to detect whether the coronavirus infection has spread in the community, particularly in the urban areas. The exercise will focus on people and communities vulnerable to the infection, he said.

Health teams will collect samples of people residing in old age homes, juvenile centres and women shelter homes. Samples will also be collected from slum dwellers, delivery boys, newspaper vendors, milkmen, hospital staff, including those managing registration counters, Ayushman Bharat mitras appointed in hospitals, security guards, salesmen, pharmacists and other urban dwellers.

The samples will be sent to laboratories for the Sars-CoV-2 test, he said.

A week ago, the state health

department had organized a sample testing drive in villages located in 18 districts in which maximum migrants had

returned, he said, adding the exercise was undertaken to assess the spread of the virus in the rural community.

The state health department teams collected 1,687 samples of non-migrants in villages. Only one sample tested positive, he said, adding that it was of a migrant worker in Kaushambi. Even though only non-migrants’ samples were to be taken, the medical team had collected the Kaushambi migrants’ sample by mistake.

After the migrant workers had returned to the state, the rural areas in districts known as the migrant zones initially witnessed a surge in the coronavirus infection.

The 1,687 samples were collected from 72 villages in 18 districts — Jhansi, Kaushambi, Jalaun, Lakhimpur Kheri, Shahjahanpur, Mirzapur, Maharajganj, Sant Kabir Nagar, Siddharthnagar, Shravasti, Balrampur, Bahraich, Banda, Basti, Prayagraj, Chitrakoot and Lalitpur. The test reports showed there was no major spread of the coronavirus infection in the rural areas, he said.

Besides the targeted drive, health department teams will continue routine sample collection as well as contact tracing in all 75 districts.