Covid-19 crisis: UP to charge those attacking doctors, policemen under NSA

The Uttar Pradesh government has decided charge those attacking the doctors, health workers and police personnel, under the stringent National Security Act (NSA).

The accused will also be made to pay for any damage caused to public property during such attacks on state government employees.

In Moradabad district, a team of doctors and police personnel was attacked by a mob on Wednesday afternoon when they visited a Covid-19 hotspot in Nawabpur area to pick up the brother of a man, who recently died of coronavirus, for quarantine.

While, the doctor sustained grievous wounds, cops and other medical staff also sustained injuries. The mob also damaged the ambulance and other vehicles.

“The chief minister has taken the cognisance of the Moradabad incident and issued directives for taking strict action, including the invocation of NSA charges against the accused,” UP additional chief secretary Awanish Kumar Awasthi said this evening.

He said the accused in the Moradabad incident had been arrested and the situation was under control. “We urge the people to cooperate with the government in the collective fight against the pandemic,” he said.

Meanwhile, the coronavirus hotspots in UP have increased to 173 across 15 districts with nearly 1.1 million people living under complete lockdown in these areas, which collectively account for 500 of the total number of coronavirus cases identified so far in the state.

The 15 districts include Agra, Ghaziabad, Gautam Buddh Nagar, Lucknow, Varanasi, Shamli, Meerut, Bareilly, Bulandshahr, Kanpur, Basti, Ferozabad, Saharanpur, Maharajganj and Sitapur.

At the same time, the Tablighi Jamaat gathering in Delhi accounts for nearly 60 per cent of the total 727 covid-19 cases in UP. While 55 patients have been discharged after treatment, the state has witnessed 11 coronavirus deaths.

“The strategy of the state of identifying and sealing off coronavirus hotspots to contain the infection has been widely appreciated and the same model, which is also termed as UP model or Yogi model, is being replicated by other states,” Awasthi claimed.

Meanwhile, the government has constituted a committee for the audit of deaths of coronavirus patients in the state, UP medical, health and family welfare principal secretary Amit Mohan Prasad said.

“The purpose of this audit is to provide guidance for the future treatment of coronavirus patients. The learning would be shared with all the hospitals dealing with Covid-19 patients,” he added.

The state has started the process of ‘pool testing’ of samples, under which the samples of 5 or more suspected cases would be tested as a single sample. The samples would be tested individually if the pooled sample tests positive. This way the sample testing process would become faster.

Yesterday, the health authorities tested 2,433 coronavirus samples across the state, he informed.