UP CM Adityanath issues directive to protect armed police from infection

Adityanath also underlined the need for continuous training of the doctors and other medical and health department staff in the state.

With an increasing number of frontline workers testing positive for Covid-19, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Adityanath on Tuesday instructed officials to protect the state's armed police from the infection.
 

Adityanath stressed that the police, provincial armed constabulary (PAC), fire services and government railway police (GRP) personnel needed to be protected from coronavirus and also sought steps to curb medical infection in hospitals dealing with Covid-19.
 

Presiding over a review meeting in Lucknow, he asked the principal health secretary to take regular feedback from the department's nodal officials posted in the respective districts to take preemptive measures to control the spread of the disease in the state.
 

He also underlined the need for continuous training of the doctors and other medical and health department staff in the state.
 

“The CM has ordered the strengthening of rural surveillance committees as migrant workers return from other states,” UP additional chief secretary Awanish Kumar Awasthi said this evening.
 

Meanwhile, the state has also started distributing Covid-19 handbills at railway stations to create awareness about the pandemic and communicate about the do’s and don’ts to the migrants and other passengers with regards to quarantine and safety protocols.
 

“We have written to the Railway Board chairman and other state railway officials for the distribution of such handbills at the railway stations. The Railways has also concurred to the idea of handing out similar pamphlets by their staff,” he informed.
 

The CM has also ordered expediting the process of setting up the UP Migration Commission to provide jobs and social security to more than 3 million migrant workers, who have returned to the state by trains and buses.

So far, the government has arranged for 1,660 Shramik Special trains to ferry UP workers from Gujarat, Maharashtra, Punjab, Karnataka etc. besides, the workers also came back by the roadways buses from neighbouring states viz. Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand etc or on their own by private and other vehicles.
 

The revenue department has completed the skills mapping of about 2.5 million migrant workers. The database will be shared with different industry chambers and state employment exchanges for providing them suitable jobs.
 

Meanwhile, the state is planning to double the Covid-19 sample testing capacity from about 10,000 at present to 20,000 by the month end by deploying TrueNat machine for faster diagnosis. A TrueNat machine will be provided to each of the 75 districts, UP medical and health principal secretary Amit Mohan Prasad said.
 

For this purpose, the state has pressed the state aircraft in service to fetch these machines from Mumbai and to transport them to the respective districts to ramp up the testing capacity. While 20 machines have already been deployed so far, the process is on for the remaining districts.