LUCKNOW: The special helpline centre of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has emerged as a major hotspot of infection in Lucknow with its 85 staffers testing positive for coronavirus till date.
The centre, situated in a posh commercial hub in the state capital, has now been shut down for sanitisation. It had been providing coronavirus-related assistance to lakhs of people in the state through the lockdown period and Unlock 1.0.
The CM office has already taken cognizance of the matter and has issued a notice to 'Surevin BPO Services Pvt Ltd', the company which is handling the BPO for the CM Helpline ‘1076’. The CMO issued the notice following allegations of lockdown norms violation by the staff.
The BPO has been asked to explain as to how the lapses occurred if face masks, social distancing and sanitisation process were followed at the BPO during lockdown; why the employees called to the office at once without following the rule of shift system and why the COVID-19 rules were not followed during the lockdown.
Meanwhile, 19 PAC personnel were found positive in the state capital, taking the number of infections in Lucknow to 650.
The overall state tally breached the 14,000 mark on Tuesday with 5259 active cases and 8,904 COIVD-19 patients having discharged after recovery at a rate of over 61 per cent. The death toll has risen to 435.
At the same time, Uttar Pradesh, which has already arranged 1,01236 beds across 563 dedicated COVID facilities across the state, drew accolades from ICMR director-general Dr Balram Bhargava, who, in his column, has credited the government with taking the benefits of Central relief package to the last person in the society and ramping up the health infrastructure to a respectable level.
The ICMR chief has written that being the largest state in terms of population, UP has managed to arrange over a lakh COVID beds and is conducting 15,000 tests per day and this figure will be touching 20,000 mark by this month-end. Dr Bhargava also claimed that at the onset of Covid-19, UP had just one laboratory to conduct COVID-19 tests and now there were 33 testing labs across the state running under the supervision of ICMR.