In the country’s most populous State, active Covid-19 cases drop to below 100 from peak of 310K on Apr 30

By VIRENDRA SINGH RAWAT

LUCKNOW, Oct 23 (The CONNECT) - Uttar Pradesh, which was among the worst affected states during the stinging second wave of COVID-19 pandemic, on Friday saw its active number of cases fall below the psychological mark of 100.

The state had reported its peak of 310,783 active Covid-19 cases on April 30. Now, the active caseload in India’s most populous state has slipped to 85. According to the UP government, of these 85 active cases, as many as 72 are in home isolation.

Interestingly, this comes a day after India scored a historic milestone of a billion Covid-19 vax doses with UP topping the chart with over 120 million doses, since the pan India drive took off on January 16, 2021.

“On the contrary, states with much less population, like Kerala, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu, account for heavy active caseloads of nearly 81,000, 24,000, 5,500, 7,500 and 13,000, respectively,” a UP government spokesperson said here.

Following an aggressive Covid control mechanism and the resultant sharp drop in the number of active cases, 44 of the total 75 districts in UP have become free of Coronavirus scourge after reporting nil in both active and fresh Covid cases.

Meanwhile, UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath, while addressing a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) programme, lashed out at the opposition parties, whom he blamed for trying to evoke vaccine hesitancy for vested political interests.

He underlined the Narendra Modi government had successfully steered India clear of the daunting pandemic challenges even as the most powerful nations floundered. “The US, which accounts for merely a fourth of India’s population, reported more than one-and-a-half times of the COVID-19 casualties compared to our country.”

UP’s COVID-19 control mechanism incorporated aggressive testing and screening under the mantra of ‘Trace, Test & Treat’, prevention through vaccination, coupled with partial corona curfews to curb the spread, has resulted in the test positivity rate (TPR) - which shows the levels of infection among people - declining to under 0.01 percent in the state.

UP’s TPR has dropped from a high of 16 percent in April, whereas states like Kerala still carry a high positivity rate of 10.3 percent.

Even as states have been witnessing a greater surge of fresh Covid-19 infections with the daily cases ranging from 15,000-2,000, UP has restricted the daily-case count below 50 for nearly 72 days in a row, the spokesperson pointed out.