Priyanka charges UP govt with failure on Covid-19 front

Congress general secretary and the party’s UP in-charge Priyanka Gandhi Vadra on Tuesday charged the Uttar Pradesh government with failing on Covid testing, treatment, tracking and vaccination — the four “pillars” for tackling Covid. In a letter to chief minister Yogi Adityanath, she said: “Don’t abandon people to battle Covid on their own in this war for humanity. You are accountable to them.” “Future generations will not forgive you if you do not put in all resources with absolute willpower in this time of crisis,” she said in the twopage letter which she also tweeted.

She also said the UP government had failed on vaccination front. “The second wave set in several months back, you could have done vaccination with speed. We are worried about the slow pace of vaccination in the state. It’s been five months that vaccination began, yet UP did only one crore inoculations.”

Talking about testing, she wrote: “The second wave has a dangerous form. Several UP cities have a disaster at its peak and the disease is spreading to villages. The biggest worry is that the rate of test does not match the speed with which Covid is spreading. A large number of cases go unreported. There’s no testing in villages and, in cities, people (are) finding it difficult to get tested. There are mere 126 testing (labs) in the government sector and 115 in the private. How will you defeat Covid if you

demolish the very first pillar-testing.” “First, the UP government will have to accept that this time of pandemic is a health emergency time, or else it will not be able to control the deadly virus. Don’t know what are your intentions behind asking for putting such people behind bars, who are engaged in exposing the truth of calamity, but first focus on controlling the virus,” she said. She also charged the government with fudging the data to show fewer Covid deaths.

“On whose instructions the districts are playing this game of fudging the data?” she asked.

She suggested “a dedicated economic package for the welfare of all health workers and frontline workers.” Among other suggestions, she said, “Restart all the Covid hospitals that were closed, make oxygen beds available on a war footing, and to augment human resource again enroll for work all retired government doctors, para-medics.”