Priyanka Gandhi shares COVID-19 tally, blames 'ineffective UP govt' for spike in cases

Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi on Saturday trained guns at the Uttar Pradesh government over a sharp increase in COVID-19 cases in the month of July. Sharing statistics of the recent spike in positive case, Gandhi noted a jump of 200 per cent in three districts of UP, 400 per cent in three others and above 1,000 per cent in one district of the state.

“Despite almost three months of lockdown and all claims of the Uttar Pradesh government, Coronavirus cases have increased sharply in July in 25 districts of the state. According to reports, 70 per cent of infected people in Prayagraj died within 48 hours of reporting positive.

We were afraid of this since the beginning of the outbreak, so we had written a letter to CM Yogi Adityanath and made positive suggestions to ramp up testing,” Priyanka Gandhi tweeted.

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The Congress leader further alleged that the surge in COVID-19 cases is due to the lack of attention to testing, delay in report, the juggling of data and contact tracing, which the UP government has no answer to.

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COVID-19 in UP

Uttar Pradesh on Friday reported 38 deaths, its highest single-day spike in coronavirus fatalities, raising the toll to 1,084 while 1,919 fresh cases pushed the infection tally to 45,363, officials said. Additional Chief Secretary, Medical and Health, Amit Mohan Prasad said the state now has 16,445 active COVID-19 cases, while 27,634 patients have so far been discharged from hospitals after recovering from the infection. Prasad said a record 54,207 coronavirus samples were tested on Thursday and the number would be increased further.

"In the past 24 hours (since 3 pm Thursday), 1,919 fresh cases of COVID-19 and 38 deaths were reported, pushing the total number of cases to 45,363 and deaths to 1,084," the health department said.

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Additional Chief Secretary, Home and Information, Awanish Kumar Awasthi said that during the weekend lockdown, directives have been issued to all districts to use drone cameras to keep an eye on the movement of traffic and cleanliness work. "Drones will be used in all districts in the next two days," Awasthi said.

Prasad said around 1.75 lakh people with novel coronavirus-like symptoms were found during the surveillance campaign conducted in the entire state till July 15. "The health department is now testing all of them," Prasad said. 

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