Over 2.5 lakh people tested for coronavirus in rural areas in a week: UP govt

COVID-19 surveillance teams in Uttar Pradesh have visited over three crore houses at block levels in districts and tested over 2.5 lakh people in rural areas in a week, the state government said on Thursday.

Surveillance teams in the state recently accelerated the pace to trace, test and treat coronavirus patients and started door-to-door campaigns in rural areas on instructions of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, the government said in a statement.

According to the weekly report on the campaign, the Covid test teams have visited around 32 million (3,19,37,797) houses in different blocks of districts within a week, between May 5 and 12, against the targeted 3,30,69,010 houses for the period, the government said.

Similarly, the teams conducted a total of 2,57,845 tests in remote blocks of the districts and the government has also distributed medicine kits to 3,74,685 Covid patients so far, it added.

The UP government said it firmly believes that test, trace and treat are the only effective ways to contain and fight coronavirus and is leaving no stone unturned to achieve this end.

The government said Uttar Pradesh recently set a new record by conducting 2.96 lakh Covid tests in a single day.

Earlier, the chief minister had directed the surveillance team to undertake door-to-door surveys, increase pace of vaccination and double the capacity in order to contain the spread of the virus and ensure prompt treatment of positive cases, it added.

Meanwhile, Uttar Pradesh on Thursday recorded 17,775 fresh COVID-19 cases that pushed the infection count to 15,80,980, while 281 new fatalities took the death toll to 16,646 in the state, according to official figures.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by The Federal staff and is auto-published from a syndicated feed.)