Silver lining: Recoveries double than fresh cases in Uttar Pradesh

LUCKNOW: Corona-battered Uttar Pradesh had something to cheer on Sunday with the state clocking twice the number of recoveries than fresh cases over a 24-hour span. As per the state health bulletin, 24,837 people recovered from the infection, which is more than double of Sunday’s Covid count of 10,682.
The trend, which is indicative of the raging pandemic touching a corner, began since Saturday when as against 12,547 fresh cases, 28,404 people were discharged from hospital after treatment.Experts said, this could ease the pressure on the state’s stretched medical facilities even as the government ramps up measures, including extending the partial lockdown by a week.
However, fatalities rose from 281 on Saturday to 311 on Sunday, taking the total death toll to 1,63,003 till date. A maximum number of 27 deaths were recorded in Meerut, followed by 20 in Lucknow and 13 in Kanpur. Basti and Chandauli recorded 12 casualties each.
Additional chief secretary, medical and health, Amit Mohan Prasad, maintained the recovery rate had touched 89%. Scaling up testing, 2.7 lakh samples were tested in 24 hours, taking the total samples tested since the outbreak of pandemic to 4.46crore.
As per state government figures, the number of active cases fell to 1,63,003 on Sunday from Saturday’s figure of 1,77,643. The biggest improvement was noticed in chief minister Yogi Adityanath’s home turf of Gorakhpur, where number of fresh Covid cases dropped from 801 to 433 in 24 hours. Meerut, which has been topping the daily tally, witnessed a dip from 879 to 701 in a day. Improvement was also noticed in case of Lucknow, where number of fresh Corona cases dropped from 617 to 525 in last 24 hours.
Significantly, Varanasi, the parliamentary constituency of PM Narendra Modi saw a slight surge in new cases – the count went up from 476 on Saturday to 496 on Sunday. The situation remained unchanged in Kanpur, which recorded 197 fresh cases.
Also, total number of citizens vaccinated in UP touched 1,47,64,942 by Sunday. This included 1,15,08,030 first doses and 32,56,912 second doses administered till date.