LUCKNOW: On Day 1 of Unlock 4.0, the Uttar Pradesh government has lifted the weekend lockdown limiting it just to Sundays. The markets will now remain open six days a week from 9 am to 9 pm.
Confirming the decision taken by UP CM Yogi Adityanath during his daily Covid-19 review meeting with his 'Team 11' on Tuesday, Additional Chief Secretary (ACS), Home, Awanish Awasthi claimed that the decision to limit the weekend lockdown to Sundays was taken to speed up development activities in compliance with the Centre’s guidelines.
“Now the lockdown will come into effect on Saturday midnight and will continue till Sunday midnight,” said Awasthi. Weekend lockdown had been in practice in the state since mid-July during which markets and majority of establishments used to remain close from Friday 10 pm to Monday at 5 am.
This decision, which was taken to speed up the ongoing development and welfare schemes in the state, would be enforced from this week, said the ACS. Besides, the CM, while reviewing the situation, asked the senior officials including the Agriculture Production Commission, Industrial Development Commissioner, Additional Chief Secretaries to review the development projects of their respective departments and expedite them. The senior officers were also asked to visit the offices under their departments and spruce up their functioning.
The CM also asked the state health authorities to ramp up the tests to 1.5 lakh samples per day. “Till the time, a formidable medicine or a vaccine is not discovered to tackle the deadly coronavirus, doing more and more tests is the only and the biggest tool to handle the crisis,” said the CM.
As per the sources, the CM drew the officers’ attention towards the surge in COVID case in the state capital Lucknow and Kanpur. He directed them to pay special attention to both the districts, do microanalysis of the increasing cases and come out with a strategy to combat the virus.
CM Yogi asked the officers to set up a team of expert and specialist doctors of KGMU and SGPGIMS to help the patients through consultation at digital platforms. He also issued directives to speed up contact tracing, surveillance, and door-to-door survey.