Week ends on grim peak with 10,536 Covid cases in Uttar Pradesh

The last few days have recorded daily case jumps in 400s with a high of 502 on Friday. In the same period, the death toll in the state rose from 222 to 275, with Sunday recording seven more deaths – three in Meerut and two in Agra and one each in Lucknow and Kanpur Nagar districts. While the fatality rate stood in the state has hovered around 2.6% — one of the lowest among the severely infected states in the country —Principal Secretary (Health) Amit Mohan Prasad on Sunday informed that out of the 4,363 patients in isolation wards, only 89 are on oxygen support system and seven are in need of ventilator facility.

Agra has most deaths at 50, followed by 38 deaths in Meerut, 18 deaths in Firozabad, 16 in Aligarh, 14 in Kanpur Nagar and 11 in Moradabad.

Even with a high recovery rate of nearly 60 per cent – 278 recovered in last 24 hours, taking the total recovered patients to 6,158 – the latest surge has pushed the active case beyond 4,000 for the first time. Noida or Gautam Buddh Nagar district has the highest number of active cases at 275, followed by Kanpur with 184. Lucknow and Agra have now 122 and 111 active cases.

Besides Noida, another district adjoining Delhi, witnessing a surge in infection is Ghaziabad. In the last 24 hours, the district recorded 46 cases – highest on Sunday — taking the cumulative number of coronavirus cases in the district to 449, out of which 167 are active cases. In past one week, Ghaziabad has recorded 121 new cases of infection. According to the district administration, most of the new cases are linked to people moving in and out of Delhi border for work and their close contacts.

Among others, Bulandshahr also recorded a spurt with 34 new cases,followed by 21 each in Jaunpur and Muzaffarnagar, 20 in Noida, 18 each in Meerut and Lucknow, 17 in Kanpur Nagar, 16 each in Agra and Baghpat, 15 in Aligarh, 12 in Moradabad, 11 in Bijnor and 10 each in Sambhal and Hardoi.

With Bulandshahr, there are now 12 districts with active cases in triple digits – Noida, Kanpur Nagar, Ghaziabad, Jaunpur, Basti, Amethi, Meerut, Lucknow, Azamgarh, Agra, Varanasi and Bulandshahr.

The government reiterated that it would further ramp up testing and efforts are being made to reduce the time between sample recovery and test results. “In most of the district hospitals, we have installed Truenat machines which will increase our testing capacity along with faster test results,” he said.