Covid situation turns grave in UP … acute shortage of beds, medicines
The Covid situation in Uttar Pradesh is fast going out of hands as the state reported the highest ever 18,021 novel coronavirus positive cases in the last 24 hours with 85 deaths, which is also the highest single day fatality, and acute shortage of beds and medicines being reported from across the state.
“In the past 24 hours, 18,021 fresh cases were reported from across the state while 3,474 COVID-19 patients recovered during this period. There are 95,980 active cases in the state while 6,18,293 COVID-19 patients have been treated and discharged. The state has reported a total of 9,309 COVID-19 deaths till now since the start of the pandemic,” Additional Chief Secretary (Health) Amit Mohan Prasad told reporters here during his daily press briefing.
The severity of the novel coronavirus infection can be gauged from the fact that in just the first 13 days of April, the cases have increased seven times. In the last 24 hours, there has been a 31 per cent spike in fresh cases as 13,685 new positive cases were found on Monday and in 24 hours this number has gone up to 18,021, an increase of 4,336 cases.
The spike has thrown normal life haywire. There is an acute shortage of beds in Covid hospitals and there is a long wait for ambulances. The essential medicines have suddenly evaporated from the shelves of pharmacies while there is a long queue at the cremation grounds in almost all the big cities of the state,
Senior government officer Manish Dixit’s daughter is admitted in a hospital and was in dire need of Remdesivir injection. A senior doctor called him up on Sunday to say that they had exhausted the stock of this injection and needed the injection immediately.
“This injection was not available in important chemist stores in Lucknow. I approached a ‘dalal’ and got the injection after paying a hefty amount of money,” he said.
The situation is so pathetic that even a senior IAS officer was made to wait in an ambulance for four hours before he could get a bed in Sanjay Gandhi Post-graduate Institute of Medical Sciences in Lucknow.
The novel coronavirus infection has wreaked havoc on the chief minister’s office as well. The chief minister’s OSD Abhishek Kaushik has also been infected. In addition, a private secretary at the chief minister’s office has been found to be coronavirus positive. This forced the chief minister to hold the Covid meeting with his Team 11 virtually on Tuesday.
In state capital Lucknow, 5,382 new novel coronavirus positive cases were reported on Tuesday against 3,892 on Monday. In Prayagraj, the number of positive cases increased from 1,295 on Monday to 1,856 on Tuesday. But there was a slight reprieve in Varanasi where the number of new cases dropped from 1,417 on Monday to 1,404 on Tuesday. In Kanpur Nagar, the new positive cases grew from 716 on Monday to 1,271 on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, the UP government has appointed Bharti Singh as acting SSP of Bulandshahr as the present SSP Santosh Kumar Singh has been infected with coronavirus. Bharti Singh, Commandant of 41st Battalion PAC at Ghaziabad, will hold the charge of SSP Bulandshahr till further orders.
