Uttar Pradesh: High Court judge, BJP MLA among latest Covid fatalities

The Allahabad High Court and its Lucknow bench will remain closed on Thursday to mourn his death.

BJP MLA from Nawabganj, Kesar Singh Gangwar, also succumbed to Covid-19 on Wednesday.

The 64-year-old had tested positive on April 10 and was initially admitted to a hospital in Bareilly. Later, he had sought the intervention of Union Health Minister Harshvardhan for getting admitted to a Delhi hospital as doctors in Bareilly recommended plasma therapy to him. Meanwhile, with the cases being now reported from rural areas, the government on Wednesday directed officials to prepare quarantine centres in the villages also.

During the review meeting with Team 11, formed for Covid-19 management, officials were told to ensure the availability of oxygen concentrator at every Community Health Centre (CHC) across the state with immediate effect.

Additional Chief Secretary Awanish Kumar Awasthi, meanwhile, said that a control room has been established under Home Department in coordination with other departments for the supply of oxygen to hospitals in the state.

He said that 321 MT liquid oxygen supply has been supplied through Food and Civil Supply Department in the past 24 hours.

Awasthi said that a working group formed with experts from IIT-Kanpur, IIM-Lucknow and IIT-BHU and Technical University Lucknow began its oxygen audit on Wednesday. The government had earlier announced to set up a special working group to audit oxygen supply in the state amid oxygen shortage in the state.

The government also claimed to have sanitised 26,000 containment zones and about one lakh markets across the state in the past week as the cases in the state surged.

The state Health Department bulletin, meanwhile, said that the state recorded the highest single-day rise in its Covid-19 death toll with 266 more people succumbing to disease, while 29,824 new cases pushed the tally to 11,82,848.

The death toll in the state now stands at 11,943.

A total of 35,903 patients were discharged after recovery in the past 24 hours.

Of the 266 fresh deaths, Allahabad recorded 21 deaths, followed by 15 in Hardoi, 14 in Varanasi, 13 each in Lucknow and Kanpur, 12 each in Gautam Buddh Nagar and Ghaziabad, 11 in Gorakhpur and 10 in Agra, the government said.

Of the new cases, Lucknow reported 3,759 cases, followed by 1,909 in Varanasi, 1,650 in Kanpur, 1,355 in Meerut, 1,261 in Allahabad, 1,076 in Agra, 1,045 in Gorakhpur and 1,041 in Bareilly.

A total of 8,70,864 patients have been discharged after recovery so far.

The total number of active cases in the state stands at 3,00,041, the statement said.

In the past 24 hours, more than 1.86 lakh samples in the state have been tested for, taking the total samples tested so far to 4.03 crore, the government said, adding that Uttar Pradesh has conducted the highest number of tests in the country.

With the last phase of panchayat elections scheduled for Thursday, the Panchayati Raj Department has ordered the sanitisation of 19,035 voting centres, while each booth has been asked to ensure that the hands of each voter are sanitised and thus there is proper availability of sanitiser at each booth. Moreover, at each booth, availability of pulse oximeter and thermometer has also been ordered to monitor the temperature of voters.

The 17 districts, where the polling would take place include Bulandshahr, Hapur, Sambhal, Shahjahanpur, Aligarh, Mathura, Farukkhabad, Banda, Kaushambi, Sitapur, Ambedkarnagar, Bahraich, Basti, Kushinagar, Ghazipur, Sonbhadra and Mau.