Covid-19 infra

UP to boost covid-19 health infra in NCR districts

Virendra Singh Rawat

Lucknow / June 15, 2020

To mitigate the spread of covid-19 pandemic in the National Capital Region (NCR), Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath today instructed officials to strengthen the health infra in the NCR districts.

These districts comprise Gautam Buddh Nagar (Noida), Ghaziabad, Meerut, Baghpat etc. The level 1, 2 and 3 covid hospitals in these districts will be further spruced up and prepared to deal with potential influx of positive cases due to the cross-border movement of people, UP additional chief secretary Awanish Kumar Awasthi said in Lucknow this evening.

Meanwhile, the CM underlined that just like lockdown, unlock 1.0 was also conditional subject to the espousal of the standard social distancing and safety protocols by the people, including wearing masks, refraining from public spitting, maintaining distance, avoiding crowding, observing night curfew etc.

He has directed the respective district magistrates and police chiefs to enforce the social distancing norms strictly and slap fine on those not wearing masks in the public spaces.

Meanwhile, the number of coronavirus active cases in UP stood at 5,064, while 8,610 patients had been discharged after treatment, thus raising the recovery rate to over 61%. So far, 417 covid-19 patients have died in the state.

To engage the migrant workers, the state has provided jobs to more than 5.7 million people, including migrants and other workers under the flagship Mahatma Gandhi  National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA).

The CM has directed officials to engage a million more workers soon, while reiterating the target of creating more than 10 million jobs under different schemes and projects in the state in the coming weeks.

Nearly 3.5 million migrant workers have returned to UP from other states viz Gujarat, Maharashtra, Punjab and Delhi, by Shramik Special trains and roadways buses.

Now, the state is sending back migrant workers of Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha and Chhattisgarh employed in the UP-based brick kilns to their native states by trains.