Noida surges past Agra in Covid count, becomes worst-hit district in UP

The district administration has blamed Delhi, one of the hotspot states in the country, for a spurt in cases. GB Nagar, comprising Noida and Greater Noida, is part of the National Capital Region and shares its borders with Delhi.

Last week, the state government told the Supreme Court that 45 per cent of the cases in Gautam Buddh Nagar have been linked to Delhi. The court was hearing a petition for restriction of movement between Delhi and Noida.

After GB Nagar, Agra (1,075), Kanpur Nagar (759), Meerut (709) and Ghaziabad (673) have the most infections in the state.

The state’s total caseload, meanwhile, rose by 547 to 14,638 while the death toll jumped by 18 to 435. This is the fourth time in the last two weeks when the 500-mark has been breached. The state added 547 new cases on Saturday.

Among the fresh cases, 42 were the jawans of the 47th Battalion Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC) in Lucknow and a former Samajwadi Party (SP) minister living in the Mall Avenue area. With 3,303 cases added in the past one week, the state has recorded an average of 471 cases daily in the period.

“Recently, a jawan of our 47th Battalion was tested positive around two days ago, after which we decided to test his contacts. We found that 42 of our jawans were positive. They were on duty different places in Lucknow, but their food used to be prepared at one place. We are trying our best that all recover soon as some of them are above 50 years of age. We are also tracing others who might have come in contact with these jawans. There might be a few gazetted officers who keep going for checking,” said Inspector General, PAC Headquarters in Lucknow, Anil Kumar Rai.

Besides the PAC jawans, other new cases in Lucknow included four persons connected to the CM’s Covid Helpline Centre, three contacts of a journalist who had tested positive, two contacts of from Ansal API and a former minister of the Samajwadi Party, said Lucknow Chief medical Officer (CMO) Narendra Agarwal. The helpline centre has emerged as a new hotspot with more than 80 cases. Lucknow has 693 cases and 397 of them have recovered.

With the recovery of 8,904 patients, the state now has close to 5,300 active cases. While 5,261 patients are admitted to different isolation wards in the state, 7,540 are under institutional quarantine.

Talking to media, Principal Secretary (Health) Amit Mohan Prasad said that they have arranged at least 1,01,236 isolation beds in 563 facilities. At present, only 139 facilities have active patients and the rest do not have patient, he said.

The 18 fresh deaths were reported from Agra, two each in Meerut and Bulandshahr, and one each in Jaunpur, Moradabad, Aligarh, Kannauj, Etawah, Gonda, Amroha, Jhansi, Mau, Hamirpur, Shamli.