Over 1 lakh tests done: 3,578 fresh Covid cases in 24 hours

On Sunday, the state had added 3,260 new cases at a positivity rate of 4.53 percent. As per the state data for Monday, with the recovery of 42,833 patients and 1,456 deaths the state has 26,204 active cases of infection.

While 8,153 samples out of one million people have been tested, 313 out of every 1 million people in Uttar Pradesh have tested positive for the virus. In the last one week, the number of new infections has grown by an average of 5.4 percent every day.

“In terms of testing, Uttar Pradesh set a new record on Sunday which no other state in the country has been able to achieve. Yesterday we tested more than one lakh tests with at least 1,06,962 samples tested. All the DMs, CMOs and their teams worked hard for this and we congratulate everyone involved in this. Overall we have tested at least 19,41,259 samples so far. Of the total samples yesterday, 3,803 pools were of five samples each with 599 of those pools found positive. Similarly, 270 pools of ten samples each were tested and 30 pools among those were positive,” said Principal Secretary (Health) Amit Mohan Prasad.

He claimed that while several other states are showing positivity rate of 15-20 per cent, Uttar Pradesh has maintained the positive rate at around 4 per cent even in the month of July. Additional Chief Secretary Awanish Kumar Awasthi said Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has directed the officials to increase testing capacity.

“He has directed that the districts with more than 25 lakh population should test more than 1500 antigen tests and districts with lesser population should test more than 1000 antigen tests. He has also directed to conduct more than 35,000 RT-PCR tests and more than 2500 by the TrueNat machines. The antigen tests should be around 60-65 thousand so that the achievement of one lakh tests is continued,” said Awasthi adding that the Prime Minister would inaugurate another testing lab in GB Nagar.

Earlier, Lucknow topped the list with 312 new positive cases, followed by 248 in Kanpur Nagar, 162 in Prayagraj, 146 in Varanasi, 139 in Shahjahanpur, 130 in Ghazipur, 116 in Jaunpur and 114 in Bareilly district.

The 31 fresh deaths included six from Lucknow, five from Kanpur Nagar, three from Jhansi, two from Prayagraj and one each from Varanasi, Gorakhpur, Bareilly, Moradabad, Ghazipur, Saharanpur, Deoria, Shahjahanpur, Muzaffarnagar, Kannauj, Gonda, Bhadohi, Farrukhabad, Fatehpur and Ambedkarnagar.