LUCKNOW: The Uttar Pradesh government is gearing up to meet any challenge posed by the new COVID-19 variant with CM Yogi Adityanath reconvening a meeting of his core team-9, comprising nine senior IAS officials, to assess the threat here on Thursday.
This comes amid the re-emergence of COVID-19 scare in the form of a new Omicron sub-variant BF.7 of the coronavirus which has led to the growing number of cases in neighbouring China and some other
countries including Japan, South Korea and the USA.
With no immediate worry with the positivity rate remaining as low as 0.01 per cent in the state, CM Yogi directed the officials to sensitize the people to use face masks in crowded and public places.
He also laid stress on taking a precautionary dose of the vaccine, the coverage of which is still not up to the mark in the state owing to people’s reluctance. In fact, of the target of 39.06 crore doses of the precautionary third dose of vaccine, only 4.48 crore have been administered so far.
The CM said that the public should be made aware of the need and utility of precautionary doses. Meanwhile, on Thursday, there were 62 active Covid-19 cases in UP and not a single case was reported in 27,208 tests carried out over the past 24 hours.
Asking officials to remain on alert in the wake of rising cases in some countries, Yogi said it was imperative to adhere strictly to the Covid protocol.
He asked the officials to use the public address system to encourage people to follow the protocol and mask themselves in crowded public places. Special directions to maintain social distancing and sanitization at night shelters to prevent an outbreak of any kind of disease, especially Covid, were also issued.
The CM has also directed the departments concerned to keep a close watch on all cases for any variant of the virus and increase daily testing. He has also asked for the integrated command and control centres to be re-activated. Emphasising the role played by village heads, Asha and Anganwadi workers and ANMs in previous Covid waves, the CM said that their assistance should be sought again in tracking people with Covid symptoms in their areas and providing them with immediate assistance.
He also asked the officials to activate the infrastructure including ICUs, ventilators and deployment of health staff in all districts. He said that the officials should ensure that all equipment procured and the expanded health facilities during the pandemic were in proper condition across hospitals in urban and rural areas.
Even health and medical education departments were directed to assess the requirement of doctors and create posts for specialist doctors where necessary.