Sudden Covid-19 surge in Uttar Pradesh's Maharajganj foxes officials

LUCKNOW: Surge in Covid-19 cases in Maharajaganj district of the state has left health officials worried. As per data, 10 cases have been reported there in the past 24 hours against one or two cases per day in the last two weeks.
What adds to the worry was that all the new cases have not travelled beyond Gorakhpur which is about 55km from Maharajganj. The fact that Gorakhpur has also not recorded many cases over the past 15 days adds to the mystery.
Reviewing the Covid-19 situation, CM Yogi Adityanath has directed officials to look into the reasons behind the surge.Meanwhile, 43 new cases were reported in the past 24 hours. With the tally for the state reached 1,70,8879. Of the total, 1685581 or 98.6% have recovered. A look at the bulletin indicated that the cases were reported from 23 districts.
Also, the state is now left with less than 500 active cases which is more than 99% less than the peak figure of 3.10 lakh touched on April 30.
ACS health and family welfare Amit Mohan Prasad informed that as many as four persons died of the complications caused by the pandemic virus in the past 24 hours taking the total to deaths to 22,780. Taking reference of the deaths, he reiterated the importance of vaccination and covid-19 prevention protocol in keeping trouble away.
Uttar Pradesh to launch special drive for coronavirus surveillance:
Despite a decline in the number of fresh cases, the Uttar Pradesh government announced the launch of two campaigns to intensify Covid-19 surveillance work. For this, a house-to-house drive to screen Covid-19 suspects across 30,000 villages would be organised between August 19 and 30.
“In this exercise, the field health workers will cover villages under their domain to screen people with fever and get them tested for Covid-19 infection. They will apprise people about the importance of Covid-19 appropriate behaviour and vaccination,” said additional chief secretary, health and family welfare, Amit Mohan Prasad.
He added that the second drive would begin from August 16 to keep an eye on adherence to Covid-19 prevention protocols.
He said UP’s surveillance work was in top gear since the beginning. So far, more than 18 crore people have been covered by health teams.