LUCKNOW: With no let up in
coronavirus cases, the state government has geared up to start seven new laboratories.
“As many as 1,248 new cases were reported in the past 24 hours, taking the state tally to 32,784. While Covid claimed 17 more lives in the state, 796 recovered from the infection, leaving the state with 10,737 active infections,” said additional chief secretary, health and family welfare, Amit Mohan Prasad.
He said that seven new labs would become functional from the next week. “In a period of 3-4 days, seven more labs will start undertaking coronavirus testing through the RT-PCR method,” Prasad said. The labs will come up in Aligarh, Varanasi, Gonda, Moradabad, Bareilly, Mirzapur and Balrampur Hospital, Lucknow.
“Until now, except for Lucknow, there were no state government run labs in these districts,” he said, adding that total number of Covid-19 samples tested in UP so far was 10.36 lakh.
“The number will rise rapidly over the next few days when information on the rapid antigen tests is included in the master database,” he said.
Of the new cases, 429 or 35% were from Meerut division: Gautam Budh Nagar (172),
Ghaziabad (128), Meerut (55), Hapur (34), Bulandshahr (32) and Badaun (8). Lucknow saw 85 cases, Kanpur (45), Varanasi (32), Gorakhpur (16) and Jhansi (27).
The other districts with double digit entries included Ballia (61), Ayodhya (41), Saharanpur (38), Varanasi (32), Sant Kabir Nagar (26), Amroha (26), Moradabad (25), Mathura (24), Aligarh (23), Sambhal (20), Hardoi (20), Azamgarh (19), Unnao (19), Gorakhpur (16), Gonda (14), Bhadohi (14), Bareilly (13), Mau (12), Kushinagar (11), Etawah (11), Bijnor (10) and Jaunpur (10).Three persons died in
Kanpur nagar, while two deaths were reported in Rampur. Gautam Budh Nagar, Ghaziabad, Moradabad, Rampur, Barabanki, Azamgarh, Prayagraj, Muzaffarnagar, Kannauj and Mainpuri recorded one death each.